More than 8,000 bereaved parents in Beijing have joined a free insurance program to help relieve the financial burden as they grow older and become susceptible to illness and accidents.

The Warm Heart Plan was launched on June 15, 2012, after the Beijing Family Planning Association signed an agreement with an insurance company in December 2011.

The city government will provide bereaved parents with a special monthly subsidy of 200 yuan ($32) per person.

The plan, which the government will purchase annually for three years, pays for medical fees incurred as a result of accidents and also provides cover for beneficiaries if the policyholders die of illness or accident.

Women diagnosed with gynecological cancers will receive a minimum one-time payment of 2,000 yuan.

People aged 55 or older will also receive a maximum one-time pension payment of 8,700 yuan.

In 2012-13, the city government paid 2.16 million yuan to buy insurance cover for 7,746 bereaved parents. In 2013, it paid 24.49 million yuan to allow 8,781 bereaved parents to join the plan.

The plan will be reviewed in June 2015 to decide whether to continue with it, according to the BFPA.

Hao Yansu, dean of the School of Insurance at the Central University of Finance and Economics, welcomed the plan as a good example for other provinces and cities.

"The insurance plan complements the government subsidy paid to bereaved parents who followed the national policy by only having one child," he said. "Instead of including it in the public insurance program and administering the plan itself, the government purchased the cover from an insurance company. Therefore, it can supervise operations more strictly by publicly monitoring the company."

Hao said that the plan can, and should, become a sustainable policy for bereaved parents nationwide.

- Wang Qingyun

(China Daily USA 04/10/2014 page7)