Cooperative Medical Care: Rural Medical Practice Under a Collective Economy

From the 1950s to the late 1980s, cooperative medical care, as the main form of medical security for rural residents in China, received high praise from the World Bank and the World Health Organization. Cooperative medical care quickly established a rural medical security system by training a large number of barefoot doctors in rural areas, establishing a three-level preventive health care network, and carrying out cooperative medical care. This approach effectively guaranteed the health of the farmers to a great extent. In an era of national economic backwardness and lack of medical resources, such a system that guaranteed the basic medical health of most farmers at a low cost and achieved such success was rare. Discussion of cooperative medical care as a matter of farmers’ life safety and government governance has significant implications for the new type of cooperative medical care currently being promoted.