By the autumn of 2011, China's new healthcare reforms have demonstrated an unbalanced situation. The demand-side medical reforms which aim to establish the universal coverage of healthcare insurance have moved forward smoothly, while the supply-side reforms (especially public hospital reform) have been sluggish. The biggest challenge facing healthcare insurance is how to raise the reimbursement rate up to 70 percent of reimbursable expenses. To reach the goal, the financing level should be raised up, while comprehensive provider-payment reforms should be carried out so as to contain the soaring medical expenses. The difficulty of the supply-side reforms is twofold. On the one hand, private providers are underdeveloped due to many institutional barriers; on the other, the reform of public hospitals is fluctuating between de-bureaucratization and re-bureaucratization. Generally speaking, there has been some progress in establishing a basic healthcare security system. However, there are many aspects to be improved in order to form a new market-oriented mechanism in which healthcare insurance can purchase healthcare services. <<