This paper identifies seven factors for China’s universal
health insurance coverage. Three of the factors seem
to be unique to China, including (1) the SARS outbreak, a
public health crisis that increased sharply political pressure
for coverage expansion, (2) the financial and political
responsibilities delegated to local governments, which
mobilized local officials to intensify outreach and enrollment
campaigns and (3) the programmatic strategy, which
led quickly to wide but shallow coverage.