Since 1 January 2025, couples pursuing fertility treatment across China have walked into a rather different kind of appointment. The largest bill on the table is no longer always the first thing standing in their way.
自2025年1月1日起，许多在中国寻求生育治疗的夫妻，走进诊室时面对的已经是另一种局面。摆在面前那张最大的账单，不再总是挡在他们面前的第一道坎。
Coverage is now complete nationwide. All 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, together with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, have brought suitable assisted reproduction services into basic medical insurance. This is no longer a pilot scheme confined to a handful of cities; it is the system itself, and it is being used on a large scale.
医保覆盖已经在全国范围内实现。全国31个省、自治区、直辖市，加上新疆生产建设兵团，都已将适宜的辅助生殖项目纳入基本医保报销范围。这不再是局限在少数城市的试点；它已经成了制度本身，而且正在被大规模使用。
According to the National Healthcare Security Administration, assisted reproduction services were used 17.096 million times under medical insurance in the first half of 2026. Direct treatment costs reached ¥29.7 billion, of which the insurance fund covered more than ¥19 billion. The five most-used procedures were embryo transfer, sperm selection and processing, embryo culture, egg retrieval and intracytoplasmic sperm injection.
据国家医保局数据，2026年上半年，全国医保辅助生殖项目使用人次达到170.96万人次。直接治疗费用达到¥29.7亿元，其中医保基金支付超过¥19亿元。使用频次最高的五项分别是胚胎移植、精子优选处理、胚胎培养、取卵术和单精子注射。
The map of demand widens
需求地图正在变宽
Guangdong, Beijing, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong remain the busiest places for treatment, unsurprisingly given their size and hospital density. What stands out is elsewhere; Heilongjiang and Xinjiang have both posted year-on-year growth of more than 100 percent, a sign that demand is no longer confined to the country’s wealthiest medical centres.
广东、北京、浙江、江苏和山东的就诊人次仍然靠前，考虑到这些地方的体量和医疗资源，这并不意外。真正值得注意的是别处；黑龙江和新疆的同比增幅都超过100 percent，说明需求已经不再局限于全国医疗资源最集中的那几个地方。
For many households, the result is already visible in the most literal way possible. Insurance-backed assisted reproduction helped bring 139,700 babies into the world in the first half of 2026 alone. Should that pace continue, the full year could end with close to 300,000 births supported by the policy.
对很多家庭来说，结果已经以最直接的方式呈现出来。仅在2026年上半年，医保支持的辅助生殖就帮助13.97万名新生儿降临人世。如果这一速度延续下去，全年有望接近30万名宝宝在政策支持下出生。
A patchier picture, still being smoothed out
一幅仍在被磨平的、并不均匀的图景
None of this means the system is finished. National authorities have said they will keep refining the insurance framework and work towards a unified national directory for medical insurance items, an acknowledgement that coverage still varies by province in ways that matter to the families involved.
这并不代表这套制度已经完善。国家医保部门表示，将继续完善医保支付体系，并推动建立全国统一的医保医疗服务项目目录，这也说明目前各省之间的报销范围仍存在差异，而这种差异对相关家庭来说并不是小事。
If that directory materialises, the gaps between regions should narrow further, and a family’s experience of treatment should depend less on which province they happen to live in.
如果这份目录能够落地，地区之间的差距有望进一步缩小，一个家庭能获得怎样的治疗，也会更少取决于他们恰好生活在哪个省份。
For now, the clearest evidence of the policy’s reach is not in any spreadsheet. It turns up in a hospital appointment that finally goes ahead, in a bill that no longer forces a family to choose between hope and expense, and in the quiet return of conversations about names.
眼下，这项政策最清晰的证据并不藏在哪张表格里，而是出现在终于能排上的门诊里，出现在不再逼着家庭在希望和开支之间做选择的账单里，也出现在那些悄悄重新被提起的名字里。
Since that first day in January 2025, the appointment itself has not changed much; what has changed is what happens after the bill arrives.
自2025年1月那个起点以来，诊室里的流程本身变化不大；真正改变的，是账单送到之后发生的事。
