Beijing will become the first city in China to buy medical insurance for all its residents. Starting from July 1, a total of 470,000 unemployed local residents will be insured against severe diseases.

According to the new regulations, unemployed residents need to pay 600 Yuan or 85 US dollars for the premium, while residents, who have subsistence allowances and do not suffer serious disabilities, can enjoy the medical insurance for free.

Zhang Dafa, Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Labor and Social Security Bureau, said the maximum claims for medical insurance is 70,000 Yuan or more than 10,000 US dollars each year.

"When a patient is discharged from a hospital, he only needs to pay a certain percentage of treatment fees. The rest will be directly handled by medical insurance agencies."

Last year, China launched a pilot project of medical insurance in 79 cities to cover 240 million unemployed urban residents, who were once excluded by the Medicare net.

China established a medical insurance system for urban employees in 1998. And as a new cooperative medical care system has been implemented in rural areas since 2003, more than 700 million rural residents out of the total 800 million has been covered by the system.

That is to say, if the new urban program is successful, all Chinese residents can have access to medical insurance.