China plans to maintain its basic medical insurance coverage rate at around 95 percent through 2030, continuing the level achieved during the previous five-year period from 2021 to 2025. The commitment is outlined in the country's recently released 15th Five-Year Plan for healthcare security, covering the years 2026 to 2030.
Issued by the National Healthcare Security Administration, the plan identifies several priorities aimed at strengthening the healthcare system’s coverage, quality, and financial oversight. One focus is expanding insurance access for a diversifying workforce. This includes allowing residence permit holders to join basic medical insurance programs and encouraging flexible workers and those in emerging job sectors to enroll in employee insurance schemes.
The plan also seeks to enhance support for childbirth-related costs by broadening insurance coverage of prenatal exams and labor pain management, working toward eliminating out-of-pocket expenses for delivery services.
With an aging population—23 percent of China’s citizens will be aged 60 or older by the end of 2025—the plan addresses long-term care insurance, a social program initiated in 2016. This insurance provides coverage for individuals with permanent disabilities needing nursing and medical care. By early July 2026, around 320 million people were enrolled in this program, with approximately 1.37 million beneficiaries receiving assistance in the first five months of the year. The new plan aims to expand this coverage further, improve technical standards, enhance training and management, and encourage innovation within long-term care services.
To ensure the financial stability of insurance funds, the plan emphasizes the establishment of a comprehensive supervision system. This includes routine and random inspections, deployment of big data and artificial intelligence tools for oversight, and a full-chain governance framework that monitors all phases from budget execution to fund utilization. Oversight will extend to drug and medical consumables pricing, platform listing rules, resource distribution across medical institutions, and the credit records of healthcare and pharmaceutical personnel.
Additionally, the plan promotes pharmaceutical innovation and improved public access to medical services. Proposed measures include offering medical insurance data services to support research and development, increasing the number of innovative drugs available under the national drug reimbursement list, and refining commercial insurance catalogs specifically focused on expensive, high-value medical products.
Efforts are also planned to improve grassroots reimbursement policies, enhance user-friendly online platforms for medicine price comparisons and pharmacy location services, and simplify direct settlement for cross-regional medical treatments. These reforms aim to make healthcare more accessible, affordable, and efficient for China’s population in the coming years.