It is not easy for this country with its huge population to set up a healthcare security net that covers all residents. It is even harder to manage it.

Repeated reports of hospitals swindling money out of local healthcare security funds by fabricating patients' records points to the urgency of strengthening the security and management of such funds.

That a case has not been concluded three years after a hospital in Zhengzhou, capital city of Central China's Henan province, forged patients' records, suggests that there is not yet a workable mechanism to identify and deal with such malpractices.

In another case involving a hospital in Harbin, capital city of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, the hospital forged documents to suggest that dozens of patients had been hospitalized and received treatment in order to obtain money from the local healthcare security fund. Despite the obvious flaws in the documents, the local healthcare security fund management center has failed to put a stop to such cheating.

It seems that some hospitals are willing to resort to such wrongful behavior as they see the local healthcare security funds as a source of easy money.

What is even more outrageous is the fact that those managing the funds do not care whether the money they manage is really paying for healthcare of genuine patients.

The money in the healthcare security funds comes from both the central and local governments and payments by individual residents. Such funds are intended as a way to realize a fairer redistribution of social wealth and a means for more residents to enjoy the fruits of economic reform and opening-up.

But if an increasing number of hospitals adopt such malpractices and if the managers do not perform their duty of guarding against such abuse, the funds will turn out to be nothing more than an ATM for greedy hospitals.

If such practices continue the government's attempt to alleviate the healthcare burdens of ordinary residents will merely benefit the hospitals instead.

An effective supervision and monitoring mechanism to prevent healthcare security funds from being abused is no small matter, governments at all levels need to attach more importance to it.

(China Daily 02/14/2012 page8)