Characteristics of Patients Sponsored by the Internet Platforms of Medical Mutual Aid

The morbidity and mortality of life-threatening diseases such as cancers are increasing year by year in China. Although the national medical insurance has been improved a lot, it still falls short of expecting “universal medical insurance”. To help the families of patients with cancer and other serious diseases to resolve the unaffordable medical cost, several internet platforms of “Peer to Peer Medical Mutual Aid” have gradually emerged recently. In the form of low threshold insurance combined with public support, these platforms provide subsidies to families of patients suffering from serious financial burden and then partly compensate them for the limit of national medical insurance. This article summarized the characteristics of declared patients sponsored by several medical mutual aid internet platforms. The results showed that the sponsored patients were mostly cancer patients (90.1%), aged 21 - 60 (88.4%), and the average amounts of financial support had a trend to decrease with the increase of age. In particular, the reported cases of thyroid cancer were increased dramatically recently, however, with a lowest average mutual aid fund. Given these data, it is urgent to list out a detailed rule for the use of national medical insurance on the treatment of cancer, to heighten the healthcare system for the occupational population, age from 21 to 60, and to establish the credit system for Medicare and Medicaid services.