According to the National Bureau of Statistics, only 29 percent of China's population is covered by health insurance. Furthermore, only employees of state-owned enterprises are entitled to virtually free medical care. In most cases, they only have to pay a nominal hospital registration fee. However, payment arrears have been mounting at some enterprises and institutions as they themselves face financial difficulties. Recently, there has been a high level of government scrutiny regarding the medical insurance system. There have been plans of containing healthcare spending to roughly 5 percent of the projected GDP, and total drug spending to 11-13 percent of total healthcare costs by 2010.
