Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government(20)

6. Ensuring and improving the people's wellbeing

Putting people first is about realizing, upholding, and promoting their fundamental interests. We will make ensuring and improving their wellbeing an important task in the work of the government.

We will make every effort to increase employment. Employment is of great importance to China's development and the people's wellbeing. We will continue to face great employment pressure this year, and governments at all levels must continue to follow the strategy of giving top priority to employment and more actively implement employment policies. We will give high priority to supporting service industries, innovative high-tech enterprises, and small and micro businesses that employ large numbers of people so as to create more jobs. We will encourage the creation of new businesses to stimulate employment. We will help college graduates, rural migrant workers and urban residents having difficulty finding jobs find employment, and strengthen technical training for ex-soldiers and help them find jobs and settle down. We will encourage college graduates to pursue careers in rural areas, local communities and the central and western regions. We will strengthen vocational training and public employment services. We will accelerate development of a sound, unified, standardized, and flexible human resources market. We will promote harmonious labor relations, increase supervision of labor dispatch, settle labor relations disputes, and intensify supervision, mediation, and arbitration of labor disputes to protect the legitimate rights and interests of employees.

We will accelerate improvements to the social security system. By the end of the year, we will have achieved full coverage of the new old-age pension system for rural residents and the old-age pension system for non-working urban residents. We will expand coverage of all types of social insurance. We will raise the basic pension for enterprise retirees. We will increase urban and rural subsistence allowances and social aid, and accelerate development of social welfare programs and charities. We will better coordinate all aspects of the social safety net. We will increase the social security fund through a variety of channels, and strengthen oversight and supervision of investment from the social insurance fund and social security fund to increase their value. We will strengthen capacity building for social security services, allow localities where conditions permit to integrate and merge social security agencies, and entrust some services to banks or commercial insurance institutions. We will accelerate the work of introducing all-in-one national social security cards.

We will vigorously promote the development and reform of medical and healthcare services. We will move faster to improve the medical insurance system covering the whole population, consolidate and expand the coverage of basic medical insurance, and enhance our capability to provide and manage basic medical services. We will raise subsidies for medical insurance for non-working urban residents and the new type of rural cooperative medical care system to 240 yuan per person per year. We will fully introduce social insurance against uraemia and seven other major diseases and include lung cancer and 11 other major diseases in the pilot program to provide insurance and aid for their treatment. We will consolidate and improve the system for basic drugs and improve the community-level medical and health care system. We will push forward reform of public hospitals, so that medical care is separated from pharmacy operations, government management is separated from hospital operations, and the practice of using pharmacy profits to subsidize medical services is ended. We will encourage and guide nongovernmental investment in hospitals, and speed up the creation of a system of hospitals with diversified ownership that is open to foreign participation. We will boost the morale of medical workers and build harmonious relations between doctors and patients. We will improve public health services and prevent and control major communicable, chronic and occupational diseases that pose a major health hazard. We will tighten control over drug safety. We will support and promote the development of traditional Chinese medicine and the medical practices of ethnic minorities.