“We are living in a world today that’s very fragile,” Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said in Beijing. “That fragile nature demands businesses and business leaders recognize a deeper responsibility for their employees.”
The program addresses a critical need for an aging population that’s contending with increasing rates of major diseases from cancer to heart ailments. The swelling burden to pay for such illnesses is stressing China’s government-run health insurance programs, which provide basic coverage for 95 percent of its 1.4 billion people.
Costly Treatments
However, families can still face catastrophic medical bills for costly treatments not covered by the public insurance, and the government has for years sought to encourage private company entrants to fill that gap.
The plan was devised after employee surveys found that 70 percent of workers were concerned about the health of elderly parents, according to the company. The company also noted an increasing number of requests for financial assistance from employees to help cover parents’ health costs.
Parents must be younger than 75 and reside in mainland China to qualify, the company said. The premium will be fully covered for eligible workers who have been employed by the company for at least two years. The plan is a “multimillion-dollar investment” annually, the company said. Starbucks said it was designed by one of China’s biggest insurance companies, though it did not name the insurer.
The private health-insurance sector in China is expanding rapidly: premium income for commercial health insurers jumped by almost 68 percent in 2016. Policies that offer a one-time payment in case of specified major illnesses, such as when the customer is diagnosed with specific types of cancer, currently dominate China’s commercial health-insurance market, and have contributed much of the growth in the past few years, according to an August report by the Boston Consulting Group Inc. and Munich RE.
/The Bloomberg/
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