Public fury as China mental hospitals recruit people to impersonate patients in insurance scam

SCMP | Feb. 14, 2026, 3 a.m. | Original

A number of psychiatric hospitals in central China have been exposed for luring healthy people to pose as mental patients in a scheme to defraud medical insurance. Photo: SCMP composite/Weibo/Douyin

A number of psychiatric hospitals in central China have been exposed over a scam in which they lure healthy people to become patients in a bid to defraud the public medical insurance scheme.

According to an undercover report by the Beijing News, most of the patients in such privately run psychiatric institutions in Xiangyang, Hubei province, do not show any abnormal behaviour and receive little treatment.

The healthy individuals told the newspaper that they stayed there because of a “free hospitalisation, free living costs” promise on offer.

In China, patients have to bear a percentage of their medical bills; public insurance covers the rest.

Many of the so-called patients, like those above, have little idea what is going on. Photo: bjnews
Many of the so-called patients, like those above, have little idea what is going on. Photo: bjnews

After they are admitted, they become cash cows for the hospital because the institutions use their personal information and fabricate medical treatments to swindle funds from the medical insurance scheme, the report said.

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