Can I use my personal account for disease screening?

There is currently no nationally unified standard answer to this question. Whether you can swipe your personal medical insurance account depends on the medical insurance policy of the place where you are insured and the specific types of screening projects.

Many coastal provinces and cities with relatively flexible medical insurance policies have already relaxed relevant restrictions. For example, many places in Guangdong and Zhejiang have included high-risk cancer screening and initial screening for chronic diseases into the scope of payment for personal accounts. Last week, I accompanied a friend who lives in Hangzhou to go to the community health service center for a low-dose CT screening for lung cancer. When paying, she directly swiped her medical insurance personal account, and did not even pay a penny in cash for the registration fee and examination fee. Many cities even include common screening items such as cancer screening and Helicobacter pylori breath test. As long as you are not covered by free public health services, you can settle the bill.

Behind the two different policies are completely different considerations: areas that support liberalization have made a clear calculation. Early screening, early diagnosis and early treatment of diseases can not only help patients suffer less, but also save a lot of expenses for reimbursement of serious diseases in the later period. On the contrary, it is good for the long-term balance of the medical insurance fund, and can also revitalize the accumulated funds in many people’s personal accounts.； However, regions that have not yet liberalized the policy are more inclined to strictly implement the original positioning of individual accounts, believing that expenditures on preventive projects should be borne by public health funds to avoid crowding out the individual account quota of insured persons for daily medical treatment and drug purchase. A while ago, I saw a netizen from Heilongjiang complaining on a social platform that he wanted to get early screening for colorectal cancer. When he paid, he was told by the window that screening projects cannot be charged. In the end, he had to pay more than 300 for the examination out of his own pocket.

In fact, the policy direction of the past two years has been very clear. The National Medical Insurance Administration also issued relevant guidance in 2023, encouraging qualified areas to gradually include safe, effective, and affordable disease screening projects into the scope of personal account payment. To put it bluntly, in the future, there will only be more and more areas that can swipe their accounts for screening. If you plan to undergo screening in the near future but are not sure whether you can clear your account, you may wish to call the consultation phone number of the medical insurance bureau in the insured area in advance, or ask the guidance desk when registering, so as to avoid confusion when paying.