The Decisive Factors in Mutual-Aid Cost-Sharing, Seen Through the Parents' Commune and the Anti-Cancer Commune

Once a mutual-aid platform reaches a stable stage, there are two decisive factors in cost-sharing: first, the incidence rate of mutual-aid events, and second, the mutual-aid amount. A person's contribution is essentially the product of the two.

This can also be seen from the cost-sharing of the Commune's various communes: the Parents' Commune and the Anti-Cancer Commune have relatively high contributions, though for different reasons.

The Parents' Mutual Aid Commune does not have a high mutual-aid amount, but because its incidence rate is high, its cost-sharing is also relatively large. This matches what we observe in daily life: the cancer incidence rate among the elderly rises in a straight line.

The Anti-Cancer Mutual Aid Commune has a high mutual-aid amount and a high incidence rate, and together these make for high cost-sharing. Some people say that a mutual-aid amount of 200,000 yuan is not high, since some insurance policies offer several million. But these are different: the Anti-Cancer Mutual Aid Commune pays out upon diagnosis, whereas a medical insurance policy with a payout of several million is merely reimbursement-based. The former corresponds to a much more expensive product; if you do not believe it, go and look up cancer insurance. As for incidence, cancer is showing an explosive trend in China. Combining these two factors, the Anti-Cancer Mutual Aid Commune's cost-sharing will be high.

This is the situation once a mutual-aid platform has entered a normal state. In a platform's early days, however, these factors give way in importance to the proportion of members who have passed the waiting period. The higher that proportion, the faster cost-sharing will rise. This is an inevitable outcome for any mutual-aid platform.

A community of one million people in which no one has passed the waiting period has no cost-sharing at all.

A community of one million in which 500,000 have passed the waiting period means one million people sharing the costs of the patients arising among those 500,000.

A community of one million in which all one million have passed the waiting period means one million people sharing the costs of the patients arising among that one million.

In these three cases the number of people is the same, yet the cost-sharing may differ by dozens of times.

As a long-established platform, we are confident that our thinking about mutual aid runs fairly deep. Our current development is very steady; controlling scale and speed is highly conducive to sustainability, and only sustainability is truly responsible toward our members. We hope members will remain patient as we explore steadily together. We have one goal: to give everyone complete protection, so that when serious illness strikes they can respond with composure.