Embracing the Change: China Commercial Health Insurance Opportunities

Commercial health insurance (CHI) has an increasingly important role to play in China’s healthcare security system. City CHI has been the latest wave taking off across over 100 major cities, offering new opportunities for innovative therapies to accelerate access and improve affordability. Large pharma players would benefit from a holistic view and forward thinking to assess how CHI fits with their China strategies and plan ahead.

Shanghai launched its city CHI in May 2021, and within two months it enrolled over seven million subscribers –37 percent of the city’s population.

Shanghai was not the first to launch its city CHI. In fact, it was a late mover after over 100 cities launched their own versions of CHI. There are certain advantages as a late mover though, learning from the successes of others to optimize Shanghai’s own design and rollout to achieve maximal impact.

China CHI landscape

CHI has always had a role to play in…