Woman cheats medical system to pay for treatment

A young woman, who has uremia in Hengshan county, Hunan province, has been sentenced to six years and fined 100,000 yuan ($16,400) for cheating the new rural cooperative medical system out of more than 420,000 yuan to treat her kidney disease, Xiaoxiang Morning News reported.

Nie Shuihua, 24, was not jailed because she has to receive frequent dialysis treatment. But 16 of her relatives and neighbors were given sentences of two to three years and fined 4,000 to 5,000 yuan each for helping her get the money.

Nie, a farmer, was diagnosed with uremia in July 2012. As it was expensive to treat the disease in a hospital in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, Nie bought fake hospitalization invoices to be reimbursed by the rural cooperative medical system.

Asked why Nie resorted to deception, Tang Qiulian, Nie's mother, said that her daughter wanted only to survive.