After Premier Li Keqiang remarked, “Health is people’s basic need. We should constantly improve healthcare services and build a healthy China”, in a government report, on March 5, Healthy China was added to the government work report, meaning the government has to improve its basic medical and health system to ensure that people can find the right doctor for treatment and can afford the expense.

China wants to build a well-off society to ensure that everybody benefits and to improve national health conditions. To do this, government at all levels has worked hard to establish a medical insurance system that covers urban and rural people, increase medical insurance standards every year, push county-level hospital reforms, and removing the practice of hospital revenues and staff members’ incomes being tied to drug prescriptions.

However, China’s basic medical system still has many problems, with many families living in poverty because of illness, or doctor-patient disputes becoming common, or urban hospitals being over-crowded while rural ones struggle to survive. then there is food and drug safety, drinking water safety, occupational safety and environmental problems to be considered, putting more pressure on government to safeguard the nation’s health, as China’s health resources, public health, medical services and drug policies fail to meet people’s needs.

For a Healthy China, these problems needed to be dealt with and the government work report suggests ways to provide urban and rural critical illness insurance, bring down drug prices, set up a conciliation process for doctor-patient disputes, and increase support for rural medical care so that rural people have convenient access to doctors.