For the Chinese authorities, providing access to quality health care and medicine is fundamental to reducing inequality, ensuring social stability and confirming the viability of the Chinese development model. After the state opt-out of the late 1970s, the majority of the population, lacking a public safety net, no longer accessed health facilities, which added to existing inequalities, especially between urban and rural areas. The reform of the health system in 2008, critical to the future of the country, aims to provide the entire urban and rural population with a minimum of health care coverage through a health insurance system, making basic medicines available, modernizing and upgrading the hospitals and the primary health care facilities, all with particular benefit for the rural populations.