China National Medical Insurance Administration: The number of people insured by basic medical insurance will achieve positive growth for two consecutive years

China News Service, Beijing, November 5 (Reporter Li Chun) China's National Medical Security Administration held a media interpretation meeting in Beijing on the 5th. Zhang Chenguang, deputy director of the Department of Planning, Finance and Law of the National Medical Insurance Administration, said that as of September this year, the number of people insured by China's basic medical insurance has reached 1.328 billion, more than in the whole of 2024, and by the end of October it will be close to the level of the whole of 2025; it is a foregone conclusion that the whole year will exceed last year, and will achieve positive growth for two consecutive years.

Regarding the recent "seven consecutive declines in the number of insured persons" that has attracted public attention, Zhang Chenguang said that one of the main reasons is to control duplicate insurance participation. According to statistics, from 2019 to 2024, more than 25 million people nationwide have been excluded from duplicate insurance coverage and invalid data. In addition, the transfer of residents to employee medical insurance and the net decrease in the permanent population are also important reasons for changes in medical insurance data.

Zhang Chenguang pointed out that the decline in resident medical insurance is consistent with the changing trend of the country's total population and is consistent with the optimization of the insurance participation structure. It is a reasonable and normal decline.

At the interpretation meeting that day, Fan Weidong, director of the Medical Insurance Center of the National Medical Insurance Administration, also introduced the inter-provincial mutual assistance policy for employee medical insurance personal accounts, that is, the medical insurance wallet version 2.0.

Fan Weidong said that the medical insurance wallet is a way for employees' personal medical insurance accounts to be pooled across provinces, allowing employees' personal account funds to pay personal expenses incurred by close relatives for medical treatment and drug purchase at designated medical institutions as required, as well as for insurance payments. The medical insurance wallet breaks the past geographical restrictions of employee accounts within the province and can be used by family members across provinces, effectively reducing the public's medical expense burden and improving the efficiency of fund use.

Medical insurance wallet version 2.0 was launched in China on September 29. According to Fan Weidong, as of the 4th of this month, it has assisted 2.0261 million people across provinces, with a total assistance amount of 1.582 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), a total of 53.2288 million yuan in medical purchases, and a total of 727,000 residents' medical insurance payments of 277 million yuan.