Medical System Reform

In order to deal with these issues in medical system, the central government planned to reform the medical system in China. In the second half of 2005, the central government organized a conference on health care system reform. This meeting aims to clarify goals and strategies of health care reform, and invited experts from government sector, universities and international organizations to join in this conference (Zou 2012). In 2006, the State Council set up a specific team working for the latest round of medical system reform. This team is responsible for drawing up overall strategies and specific policy measures of health care reform, and all team members come from public sectors related to health and finance (Zheng et al 2010). One year later, this team decided to entrust a number of domestic and international institutions to help design reform proposal. These institutions include Development Research Centre of the State Council, Peking University, Fudan University, the World Bank and the WHO. Among these institutions, experts from the two universities suggest establishing a unified healthcare security system which is led by the central government, while the WHO recommends that the central government should ensure equality of opportunity to receive health care and market mechanism should be used to provide and price medical services (Zou 2012). At the same time, this team sought advices from the public. Individuals and social organizations could express their opinions on health care reform in official websites, and their advices are possible to be taken into consideration. Within one year, the central government received more than 15000 advices and over 600 proposals about health care reform (Li 2014). In addition, medical workers and pharmaceutical enterprises also presented their comments on medical system reform. In 2009, the National Development and Reform Commission proposed the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Deepening the Health Care System Reform, which plans to establish a universal medical system and to improve health conditions of all citizens (Zou 2012). One year later, the central government selected some cities for experiments in health system. The reform plan would be modified based on the results of these pilot projects. In the latest round of health care reform, a number of interest groups have taken part in the process of policy making. These interest groups include sectors of the central government, research institutions, medical enterprises, experts and the public. In the policy making process, these actors have different functions and there are different forms of relations between them. Government sectors are the most important actors and play a dominant role in the process of medical system reform. These sectors are the State Council, the Development Research Centre of the State Council, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. …show more content…
According to the classifications of Marsh and Rhodes (1992), actors engaging in medical system reform could be divided into five forms of networks. These networks have different characteristics and there are different kinds of relations between them.
First of all, central government sectors compose the policy community. This community just has a limited number of actors and would exclude other public sectors irrelevant to health care. Actors of the community depend on each other and exchange resources through frequent interactions. Even though they have different preferences and interest, they have potential to achieve a policy agreement and coordinate with each other in policy making. In the process of medical system reform, they continuingly negotiate with each other, and intend to achieve the common goal through cooperation and …show more content…
It is obvious that there are interactions between different actors in policy making and other social entities could influence the policy decisions of the central government. These actors are allocated to different networks based on their own interests and the relations between them. Policy makers not only actively promote coordination between actors in policy community, but also cooperate with actors of other networks, in order to improve the reasonability and effectiveness of health care reform. In the policy making process, actors of different networks actively express their opinions and intend to influence policy decisions. Policies on medical system reform are formed by interactions between various actors of different forms of