What the Public Truly Craves May Not Be Absolute Perfection, but Relative Fairness

In a previous article I noted that the risk protection system is itself intricate and complex, and that achieving a flawless, all-encompassing coverage is an almost impossible goal—just as developing a drug that can fully eliminate illness and achieve immortality faces insurmountable objective limits. Since perfect protection is out of reach, what is the public's true inner demand? In my view, the answer comes down to one word: fairness.

Most people's dissatisfaction with protection issues often stems from horizontal comparison, and often they themselves may not clearly perceive where the feeling comes from. For the same illness, others can use better targeted drugs while you are restricted; when seeking care, others can connect with a senior specialist while you can only choose an ordinary physician; in hospital, ward standards differ vastly; and when the bills are finally settled, the reimbursement ratios are worlds apart…… Layering all these disparities together gives rise to a great deal of negative feeling. These differences are the main source of the public's complaints about existing protection.

The question that follows is whether fairness in protection can actually be achieved. By my judgment, coordinating and narrowing protection disparities within a reasonable range, and solving the fairness problem, is in fact easier to accomplish than building an absolutely complete health insurance system with no blind spots.

But to smooth out unfairness in protection at its root, the core force for adjustment does not lie with grassroots organizations but with top-level design and national coordination. A model like our critical-illness mutual aid can cover only a segment of the population and meet the supplementary needs of a small number of people; its scale is limited and it can hardly move the overall protection landscape. To truly shore up the foundation of inclusive protection and narrow the protection gap for all, the sustained deepening of reform in the social security and medical insurance systems is the fundamental path.