Beijing to Reduce Medical Insurance Funds Paid Into Worker’s Accounts

What’s new: Starting Sept. 1, the municipality of Beijing will reduce the share of medical insurance funds deposited into the personal accounts of urban workers, joining a growing list of provincial-level regions that have adopted similar reforms.

The new rules will also no longer allow participants in the scheme to withdraw funds from their personal accounts at will, the Beijing Municipal Medical Insurance Bureau announced on Friday.

The funds should only be used to pay for certain medical costs in line with the regulations of the bureau, according to the announcement.

Funds deposited into the accounts before Sept. 1 can still be withdrawn regardless of the purpose.

The background: Beijing’s reform echoes the State Council’s call last year to bulk up the collective accounts in the urban workers’ medical insurance scheme.

As of the end of 2021, China’s state-run basic medical insurance system covered 96.6% of the country’s 1.4 billion people, according to the National Healthcare Security Administration, which oversees the system.

The system comprises a medical insurance scheme for urban workers that collects funds from employees and employers, and a separate system for the urban unemployed and rural residents. The latter relies heavily on central and local government subsidies because of low personal contributions.

In the urban workers’ scheme, funds are deposited into participants’ personal accounts and pooled into collective accounts managed by local medical insurance authorities.

The collective accounts are used to reimburse medical costs of all local participants in the scheme, while the personal accounts are designed to pay for personal medical costs.

However, medical insurance experts have been calling for stricter control over or even cancelling personal accounts, saying the use of these funds are too loosely regulated.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use. To read the full story in Chinese, click here.

Contact reporter Zhang Yukun (yukunzhang@caixin.com)

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