"The sixth insurance" is here. Are you the beneficiary or the payer?

“Long-Term Care Insurance” has arrived—this is the “sixth type of coverage” beyond the “five social insurances and one housing fund,” but what it truly brings may be not just the addition of one more layer of protection; it may mean that the costs of aging are starting to be shifted more clearly to the present.

On March 25, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Accelerating the Establishment of a Long-Term Care Insurance System,” which means the “Long-Term Care Insurance” pilot that has been running for a full 10 years has officially entered a stage of full-scale rollout. As planned, the system will cover employees in both urban and rural areas nationwide in about 3 years, with a unified benchmark premium rate capped at around 0.3%.

Supporters believe this is a necessary system for addressing the predicament of “one person becoming unable to care for themselves and the whole family becoming unbalanced.” Critics, however, believe that at its core, it is essentially an additional mandatory deduction added outside the “five social insurances and one housing fund.” The heart of the controversy is really only one question: is it truly a form of insurance, or is it a “quasi-tax” operating under the name of insurance? And this question determines whether it means increased protection, or transferred pressure.

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