The Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu announcedat a press conference that efforts involving the planning and management of medical resources should be made in order to secure an orderly development for private health care institutions. Public hospitals should see moderate development while more room should be made for growth of private investment in the sector. Qualified private investors will be given priority to new hospital constructions, he said. A small number of private hospitals and clinics have emerged in some of China’s major cities in the past 10 to 15 years. These facilities range from private dental clinics to multi-city hospital networks. They often operate on a much smaller scale than the average public hospital, allowing them to devote more time to each patient because of a better staff-to-patient ratio and lower patient numbers. In many cases, however, these facilities have found it difficult to attract sufficient clinical talents to serve patients, mostly because clinicians are reluctant to leave academic institutions for untried new providers. Authorities want more non-governmental capitals to enter the healthcare sector as soon as possible to increase the supply of medical services and to give private organizations more leeway to encourage competition. The rates of hospital beds and patient volume provided at private hospitals should double by the end of 2015. The healthcare reforms that the PRC government announced in early 2009 have elicited considerable excitement among potential investors in China’s large and growing healthcare services market. According to Zhu, these measures are set to foster reforms of government-funded hospitals and encourage non-governmental capital to build more health institutions. One potential stumbling block to investment in private facilities is the relatively small scale of private medical insurance in China. Though China’s healthcare reforms include a provision to expand the role of insurance in the healthcare system, the country currently has a limited market for private insurance. Because of most Chinese citizens do not fully understand the supplementary private insurance option and have a hard time finding appropriate products, they generally pay for their uncovered medical bills out of pocket. Households usually accumulate large amounts of cash as a hedge against the possibility that those funds will be needed some day for hospital care, because of the unsuitableness of the government’s universal health-care insurance. Public hospitals, which provide 90 percent of China’s medical services, totaled 13,440 by the end of October. Non-public and public hospitals will be treated equally in terms of access to medical insurance programs and other qualifications and the number of public hospitals will be controlled and medical resources will be optimized, said a statement. The gLAWcal Team Monday, April 14, 2014 (Source: People Daily) This news has been realized by gLAWcal—Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development in collaboration with the University Institute of European Studies (IUSE) in Turin, Italy and the University of Piemonte Orientale, Novara, Italy which are both beneficiaries of the European Union Research Executive Agency IRSES Project “Liberalism in Between Europe And China” (LIBEAC) coordinated by Aix-Marseille University (CEPERC). This work has been realized in the framework of Workpackages 4, coordinated by University Institute of European Studies (IUSE) in Turin, Italy.