The impact of medical insurance programmes on the health of the insured: Evidence from China

The impact of medical insurance on the health of the insured has long been an issue of major concern within academia. From the beginning of the 21st century, the Chinese government has invested a large amount of money in national medical insurance programmes. China's current national medical insurance system consists of three types of programmes: basic medical insurance for urban employees (BMIUE), basic medical insurance for urban and rural residents (BMIURR), and public medical insurance (PMI). These three types of medical insurance have significant differences in terms of premiums, policy deductibles, and levels of coinsurance, thus providing us with the opportunity to study the different impacts these programmes have on their covered members. Based on the 2016 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) conducted by the China Social Science Research Centre in Peking University, this paper applies the ordered probit model to study the various impacts of these three programmes on the insured under each plan. The study found that compared with citizens who are not enrolled in any insurance programme, citizens who are covered by one of the three programmes report better health; compared with those covered by the BMIUE and BMIURR plans, members covered under the PMI programme report significantly better health; and after controlling for the adverse selection of participants in either the BMIUE or BMIURR plan, citizens who are enrolled in the BMIUE programme have a higher utilization rate of medical resources and report better health than those enrolled in the BMIURR plan.