By Feng Wenmeng, Ke Yanghua, Liu Shenglan& Ge Yanfeng, Research Team on "Strategies for Advancing Health-Wellness-Based Old-age Care", Research Department of Social Development, DRC

Research Report, No.227, 2019 (Total 5727) 2019-12-16

Abstract: The development of commercial health insurance against the backdrop of population aging is very important for reducing the medical expense burden of the elderly as well astheir families and better enabling them to handle medical problems with medical health insurance. As a series of policies to encourage the development of commercial health insurance are promulgated, coupled with the improvement of residents’ income and the enhancement of their awareness of health and insurance, commercial health insurance has achieved rapid development in recent years. However, commercial health insurance still faces some problems to be solved urgently, such as low insurance density (premium income vs total population) and insurance depth(premium income vs GDP), low compensation level, unbalanced product structure, prominent regional imbalance, and inability to meet the demand of the elderly. As a result, the role of commercial health insurance in offering multi-level insurance needs to be further brought into play. In the future, in order to better meet the people’s health needs, especially the ever-changing health needs brought about by population aging, we need to deal with them with related measures, such as straightening out the relations between social medical insurance and commercial health insurance, strengthening in-depth cooperation with medical service institutions, speeding up the development of commercial health insurance products suitable for the elderly, and paying more loving care to those who are now on the threshold of becoming old.

Key words: commercial health insurance, health care guarantee, population aging