Health insurance industry incomplete

China's social medical insurance system covers around 95 percent of the people in China, but the system still can't help ease the financial pressures for families when one of its members suffers from a serious illness.

Ideally people should be able to take advantage of commercial medical insurance options for serious illnesses to complement the basic care they already have access to, yet such options are still under utilized. For one thing, most people in China are unwilling to spend money on commercial insurance if they are currently healthy. Also, since the scale of the health insurance industry is still so small in China, the loss ratio remains quite high. Most insurers actually gain very little, if anything, financially from offering medical coverage products.

Compared to most developed nations, China still has a lot of work to do to develop its health insurance industry. Individuals free of illness must first realize the need to safeguard their wellbeing with comprehensive medical insurance, while companies should also try to reduce their risks and losses in order to make such plans more commercially viable.