Wall Street Journal’s Nicholas Zamiska wrote today (subscription required) that China’s government is struggling with its health care reform because the system is “marred by rampant over-prescription and other shortcomings” and that ” is slowing the development of private medical insurance in China . . . limiting Beijing’s options as it strives to rebuild the system. ” He’s basing his comments on a recently released study by Swiss Reinsurance Company (SwissRe — the world’s largest reinsurer by premiums) proposing a public-private partnership approach to financing health care for China’s 1.3 billion people.

For those interested, the study is well worth taking a look at and can be downloaded from their website. The report speaks to three important “improvement principles”:

“Firstly, China should develop a multi-level health insurance system that ranges from basic medical insurance coverage to the full spectrum of commercial market offerings, with clearly defined roles for each level. Such a structure would be consistent with the direction taken by most regimes around the world today.

Secondly, the report calls for measures that would allow hospitals and patients to be part of the risk-sharing community, together with insurance carriers (both commercial and social), thus minimizing unnecessary care and excessive claims.

Thirdly, the government should leverage the private insurance industry’s expertise, professional administration experience and commercial instincts to uplift the standard of industry practice throughout the entire medical insurance delivery chain.”

The report takes a look at the many obstacles to health care reform and advocates that “China should have as a long term vision the development of a comprehensive multi-level health insurance market that includes a basic level of affordable coverage as a social scheme available to everyone, and a voluntary supplement from the private insurance sector.”

This study was commissioned by China’s Insurance Regulatory Commission and is the first of several the Chinese government is sponsoring.