Can the Various No-Threshold, No-Denial Huimin Insurance Plans Kill Critical-Illness Mutual Aid?

Quite a few places have launched Huimin Insurance, and it really is very good. Compared with mutual aid platforms, it has two major advantages:

No threshold: anyone can join, with no or very few requirements as to age or pre-existing illness.

No denial of claims: as long as certain conditions are met it pays out — the only question is how much.

These are precisely the problems that KangAi Commune gets cursed over every day and finds so painful. So can they kill KangAi Commune's mutual aid platform? I think for the time being they cannot.

1. The question of price sustainability. Premiums are very low while the product is new, but whether that can be maintained after it has been running for a while is doubtful. Because the current policy may encourage adverse selection and harm fairness; and since buying or not buying is voluntary, will the number of willing healthy people decrease?

2. Such a cheap price means a relatively high deductible and a limited range of reimbursable medical costs, which means Huimin Insurance's total claims payout is limited.

3. It is a reimbursement product and can only supplement medical expenses, whereas mutual aid is a fixed-sum-on-diagnosis product, which can provide some compensation for lost work and living costs, and can be freely used for other life purposes beyond medical care.

In the end, Huimin Insurance is mutual aid on a large scale, and it too will be governed by the essential characteristics of mutual aid. But because the government is pushing it, there may be three variables in future. First, the government's willingness and capacity to subsidize; second, the possibility of compulsory enrolment in future; third, the possibility of substantially refining and amending the terms.

But this is certainly a good thing, and we should keep watching. To members who have joined Huimin Insurance and want to leave KangAi Commune, my view is that deciding after another year or two would not be too late. My overall view is unchanged: whether it is public health insurance, commercial insurance or Huimin Insurance, pairing it with mutual aid as a layered addition to your own protection is certainly the best choice. Expecting one product to solve all of society's medical problems is definitely unrealistic.