Grounded in the Value of Social-Emotional Connection: The Unique Advantages of Running Huimin Insurance on a Mutual Aid Model

Huimin Insurance is an inclusive livelihood protection program launched by local governments in partnership with commercial insurers. With a low entry threshold, affordable premiums, and broad coverage, it is an important public livelihood project for improving the multi-tiered medical protection system, providing a safety net for ordinary residents, and enhancing public welfare. At present, Huimin Insurance in China is run overall along the logic of a traditional commercial insurance product, with clear strengths: transparent rules, a mature and proven approach, ease of public understanding, and low promotion costs. But this model builds only a one-way contractual relationship between the insured public and the insurance company, and completely plays down the core social value of interpersonal mutual aid and neighborly support that inclusive protection itself contains. Drawing on years of experience in the online mutual aid industry, this article proposes refining how Huimin Insurance is operated and introducing the mutual aid model to rebuild its operating logic, so as to balance protection function, social value, industry development, and administrative effectiveness, and further amplify the livelihood and social benefits of Huimin Insurance.

I. The Core Shortcoming of the Traditional Commercial Model for Huimin Insurance: The Absence of a Social Mutual Aid Character

After a long period of market-driven development, modern commercial insurance has formed a standardized system of commercial contracts. Between the insured and the insurer there is a purely commercial relationship of risk consideration and matched rights and duties, while insured individuals remain independent of and unconnected to one another. This model is the inevitable result of the insurance industry's marketization and has the advantage of being highly standardized and market-based, but it also produces a loss of core value — the humanistic quality of insurance's original 'shared burden, shared risk' is weakened, and the social bond of people helping one another gradually dissolves.

Huimin Insurance differs from ordinary commercial insurance in its special character of government endorsement, inclusive public welfare, and livelihood safety net. Its founding purpose is not only to fill in medical risk protection for the public, but also to carry public value in improving social governance, gathering social goodwill, and fostering a culture of mutual aid. The purely commercial operating model in place today delivers only the basic function of risk protection, without tapping or releasing Huimin Insurance's value for social governance; it cannot let the public perceive the public-welfare core of inclusive protection, and struggles to play Huimin Insurance's important role in cultivating a society-wide sense of risk, building an atmosphere of neighborly mutual aid, and drawing people closer to one another.

II. The Core Value Advantages of Realizing Huimin Insurance Through a Mutual Aid Model

The mutual aid model is the operating form closest to the origins of inclusive protection, with the core logic of 'when one is in trouble, all lend a hand; all for one, one for all' — a close match for Huimin Insurance's inclusive positioning and public-welfare character. If the government takes the lead in building a localized mutual aid protection system and reformulates the existing Huimin Insurance model, multiple value upgrades become possible.

From the social perspective, the mutual aid model can reshape how the public understands protection and reconnect people to one another. The insured are no longer simply 'paying for protection' but actively taking part in public mutual assistance and jointly fending off group risk. Those who are fortunate contribute a little and help groups in hardship; those who are unfortunate receive collective support and ease their medical pressure — letting every insured person directly feel the underlying logic of helping others and thereby helping oneself and of sharing risk, and deeply understand the original meaning of insurance and inclusive protection. Over the long term this can effectively cultivate protection awareness across society, promote a social ethos of mutual aid and goodwill, draw people closer, and help build a harmonious society.

From the industry perspective, the mutual aid model will not undermine the development of traditional insurance; on the contrary, it can empower the industry to expand and improve in quality. Huimin Insurance reformed along mutual aid lines can still be delivered and operated by professional insurers entrusted by the government, drawing fully on insurers' risk-control, claims, and service systems to keep the program running in a standardized way. At the same time, the mutual aid model can spread the basic concept of protection on a large scale, raise society-wide risk awareness, and activate public demand for protection arrangements. Beyond basic mutual aid protection, people will actively seek out commercial insurance products with higher payouts and more comprehensive coverage, further widening the market for the insurance industry and realizing a two-way empowerment of livelihood protection and industry development.

From the government perspective, the mutual aid model can improve the fiscal protection system and ease the government's burden as the payer of last resort. The traditional Huimin Insurance model leans heavily on government fiscal backing and credit endorsement, whereas the mutual aid model centers on shared contributions from the public, with risk borne by the entire insured group, so the government need provide only limited backing and regulatory safeguards rather than bearing the full payout burden. This can both effectively lighten the burden on local finances and enhance the sustainability of livelihood protection, while sustaining the credibility of government livelihood services through a transparent, standardized operating mechanism.

III. The Feasibility of a Mutual Aid Model for Huimin Insurance and a Concrete Reform Plan

At the underlying level, online mutual aid and commercial insurance share highly consistent actuarial foundations, risk-sharing logic, and operating logic: both use group accumulation, pooled funds, and risk-sharing to achieve a collective hedge against individual risk. Applying the mature online mutual aid operating model to Huimin Insurance is therefore low in implementation difficulty, high in fit, and low in reform cost. The model can be upgraded along four dimensions, upholding the operating principles of openness, transparency, and traceability throughout:

First, reform the payment model, replacing up-front sale with post-event cost-sharing. Abandon the traditional insurance sales model in favor of a monthly or annual dynamic post-event cost-sharing mechanism. The public can participate through a pre-funded account or automatic bank card deduction, with costs shared fairly according to the actual mutual aid payouts in the period — 'charged as incurred, risk shared' — better suited to the public-welfare character of mutual aid and lowering the entry threshold for the public.

Second, refine bill disclosure to visualize the value of helping others. Generate a dedicated monthly mutual aid bill for each insured person, clearly listing their contribution for the period, the number of people helped, the assistance cases, and the use of funds — letting people see directly the public-welfare value corresponding to their own contribution, breaking the current situation of 'paying without any sense of it,' and strengthening their sense of participation, identification, and value.

Third, make the review process public to guarantee fair and just entitlements. Publicly disclose all mutual aid and assistance applications and the outcomes of the full process, whether approved or rejected, clarifying assistance standards, review basis, and reasons for rejection, eliminating back-room dealings, safeguarding the fairness and justice of the mutual aid system, and letting participants experience the whole mutual aid process.

Fourth, publish regular operating reports to achieve transparent oversight throughout. Issue an official mutual aid operating report monthly, fully disclosing core data such as the number of insured persons, assistance cases, income and expenditure, retained surplus, and risk-control review, so that fund flows are transparent, the operating process is open, and the data are searchable and traceable, subject to oversight by society and the public at every step.

IV. Conclusion

The core value of Huimin Insurance lies not only in the financial protection function of 'risk backstop,' but even more in the social-governance function of 'inclusive mutual assistance.' The traditional commercial operating model, though mature and stable, lacks the core of mutual aid and goodwill, and struggles to maximize Huimin Insurance's livelihood value. Introducing a mutual aid model to refine how it is run requires no reconstruction of the existing system, is low in reform cost, and is highly feasible in practice; it preserves the advantages of professional insurance operation while activating the value of social mutual aid, spreading protection awareness, easing fiscal pressure, and raising government credibility — a high-quality path for iterating and upgrading Huimin Insurance and deepening inclusive livelihood protection.