At a seminar discussing ways to prevent chronic disease held in Shanghai on March 31, 2012, Chen Zhu, Minister of Health, revealed that the ministry was planning to include expenditures on counseling to stop smoking into the basic medical insurance system provided by the government, and would pay for drugs that help reduce dependence on tobacco.

Chen's remark sparked immediate controversy. Supporters believe that smoking has brought health threats and burdens to the health care system and has become one of the most pressing public health tasks. Subsidizing smokers by including medication to quit smoking in the basic health insurance is not a waste of insurance funds, they say, but will save money in the long term to reduce strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and other tobacco-related diseases.

However, critics argue that the move is unfair to non-smokers. Government medical insurance should take care of the most urgent needs, while it is wrong to categorize smoking as a disease, they say.

China is the world's largest tobacco producing and consuming country, with 300 million smokers and 740 million victims of secondhand smoke. About 1.2 million people died from tobacco-related diseases each year, according to the Health Ministry.

FOR

Yu Wenjun

Rednet.cn

I support covering the expenditures on counseling to stop smoking and drugs under the medical insurance as it will save money for the system.

Undoubtedly, smoking is hazardous to people's health and it is even called the No.1 killer of human beings. According to news reports, over 1 million people die from smoking-related diseases each year in China, more than the combined number of deaths in the country related to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, traffic accidents and suicides. The figure shows that eliminating smoking is an urgent issue.

As smoking is a trigger to many illnesses, curing tobacco addiction is actually reducing the chances of getting cardiovascular and lung diseases. And the cost of curing these illnesses is much higher than that of medicating smokers. In this way, a large sum of money will be saved for the medical system. 

Yang Huayun

Jxnews.com.cn

The World Health Organization included tobacco reliance in its International Classification of Diseases as a chronic disease as early as the 1990s. And the organization asked doctors to offer medical help to smokers as the chance of quitting smoking was slim if reliant on smokers' willpower. 

Countries in Europe and North America and some in Asia have treated tobacco addiction as an independent disease and covered its medication in health insurance programs.

When China's medical insurance system was established, it attached more importance to treatment rather than prevention of diseases. However, if the medical insurance system only aims at providing treatment, but loses its significance as institutional incentives for preventing diseases, there will never be enough funds for the system. Covering the expenditures on counseling to stop smoking and drugs under the system is, to some extent, a positive sign for changes in the concept of setting up medical insurance from treatment to maintaining health.

 He Yong

Xinhuanet.com

To protect people's health, I think it is worth carrying out the proposal.

Smoking is harmful to the health. Even if the smokers don't get any disease when they are smoking, they are likely to be infected by many illnesses in the long run due to the bad habit. The best way to protect smokers' health, even life, is to help them quit the habit, not treat them after they get diseases like lung cancer. In other words, covering the expenditures on counseling and drugs under health insurance is treating disease in advance.

Moreover, diseases triggered by smoking are mostly fatal ones. The cost of curing these diseases will be paid by the health insurance funds, the sum of which far exceeds that of medicating smokers.