Inner Mongolia improves medical insurance system to protect residents

Since the beginning of this year, North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region has consolidated and improved its “triple security system,” which is comprised of basic medical insurance, critical illness insurance and urban and rural medical assistance. The autonomous region has also formed a comprehensive security mechanism to reduce medical expenses for insured patients.

Jin Manyi, director of Inner Mongolia’s healthcare security bureau, said that the number of people participating in basic medical insurance in Inner Mongolia was 21.72 million at the end of September, including 5.40 million employees and 16.31 million urban and rural residents. 

The percentage of people participating in the basic medical insurance program is now 95 percent, and the percentage of medical expense reimbursements paid out to people on employees and urban and rural residents’ policies is roughly 85 percent and 75 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, urban and rural residents are now fully covered by critical illness insurance, and the payment percentage within the policy scope exceeds 60 percent.

The hospitalization assistance rate of extremely needy people, subsistence allowance recipients and the registered poverty-stricken population in rural areas exceeds 70 percent of their total medical expenses.

Also, responding to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, Inner Mongolia has successively introduced several special medical security policies and measures.

As of the end of September, medical expenditures of 347 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases had been settled, with the settlement amount reaching 3.80 million yuan ($567,164.18).

Inner Mongolia’s tax reduction and deferred payment mechanism for basic medical insurance premiums for employees has supported enterprises to resume work and production. The plan has saved enterprises a whopping 1.47 billion yuan.

Inner Mongolia also pre-allocated 2.11 billion yuan in medical insurance funds for the first half of the year to designated medical institutions to ease the financial pressure faced due to the impact of the epidemic.