El seguro de cuidados a largo plazo avanzará hacia una cobertura integral

Beijing Business Daily (Reporter Li Xiumei) As an important measure to address the aging population, the long-term care insurance, known as the “sixth social security,” has been in pilot since 2016 and has now completed ten years. Over the decade, the system has evolved from nothing to a comprehensive coverage, from pilot to expansion, achieving phased results. It is now transitioning from exploratory pilots to a nationwide institutional framework. According to plans, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the National Healthcare Security Administration will accelerate the development of a long-term care insurance system with Chinese characteristics, moving from pilot projects to full coverage, and achieving new breakthroughs in system construction.

This year, marking the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan, is undoubtedly a critical period for establishing a comprehensive long-term care insurance system. “Long-term care insurance coverage reaches 300 million people” and “promoting long-term care insurance” are mentioned twice in this year’s government work report. The system is also a hot topic at the National Two Sessions, with many NPC deputies and CPPCC members offering suggestions for its development, such as establishing and improving the long-term care insurance system, standardizing policies across provinces and cities, quickly formulating long-term care insurance laws, and building a complete legal framework.

Against the backdrop of expanding coverage and continuous policy improvement, service innovation by market participants has become a key factor in whether long-term care insurance can “remain steady and far-reaching.” Beijing Business Daily has noticed that, in the process of advancing this major livelihood project, commercial insurance institutions, as important service providers and product suppliers, are continuously exploring pathways to upgrade their service capabilities. An increasing number of insurance companies are participating in managing long-term care insurance, undertaking core functions such as fund accounting, service auditing, and disability assessment.

Fu Yifu, a special researcher at the China Merchants Bank, told Beijing Business Daily that the participation of insurance institutions in long-term care insurance mainly manifests in four dimensions: first, management services including fund accounting, disability assessment, and service auditing; second, product supply, developing commercial long-term care insurance products as supplementary basic protection; third, service network integration, leveraging their resources to connect with nursing homes, medical resources, etc.; fourth, data and system support, assisting the government in building and operating information platforms.

Besides policy-based long-term care insurance, commercial long-term care insurance is also expected to have broad development prospects amid surging market demand and policy opportunities. The “Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Health Insurance” issued last September mentioned accelerating the development of commercial long-term care insurance and income loss insurance for disabilities, supporting commercial long-term care insurance to provide full-term protection after retirement. The State Council’s “Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Service Consumption” also proposed promoting deep integration of commercial health insurance with health management, enriching the supply of commercial long-term care insurance.

How should commercial insurance companies seize new opportunities during the expansion of long-term care insurance? Fu Yifu stated that in terms of product innovation, developing differentiated commercial long-term care insurance, such as products targeting specific groups or combined with health management services; in service integration, building a closed loop of “assessment—care—rehabilitation,” integrating home care, community care, and institutional care resources; in ecosystem construction, collaborating with medical, rehabilitation, and elderly care institutions to create service networks, exploring models of “insurance + services + technology,” such as using smart devices to monitor and prevent disability risks, forming a long-term care service system covering prevention, compensation, and support.