IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/hecopl/v15y2020i1p56-71_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is universal and uniform health insurance better for China? Evidence from the perspective of supply-induced demand

Author

Listed:
  • Yu, Jianxing
  • Qiu, Yue
  • He, Ziying

Abstract

China has achieved nearly universal social health insurance (SHI) coverage by implementing three statutory schemes, but gaps and differences in benefit levels are apparent. There is wide agreement that China should merge the three schemes into a universal and uniform SHI. However, data on the medical expenses of all inpatients in 2014 at a public Tier-three hospital suggests that supply-induced demand (SID) is a serious concern and that, under the design of the current schemes, a higher benefit level has a greater impact on the total expenses of insured patients. Thus, if SID is not effectively controlled, a universal and uniform SHI may be more harmful than beneficial in China. Finally, we suggest that China should substitute the existing fee-for-service design with a suite of bundled provider payment methods; furthermore, China should replace its current system of pricing drugs that encourages hospitals and doctors to use costlier medications.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu, Jianxing & Qiu, Yue & He, Ziying, 2020. "Is universal and uniform health insurance better for China? Evidence from the perspective of supply-induced demand," Health Economics, Policy and Law, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 56-71, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:hecopl:v:15:y:2020:i:1:p:56-71_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1744133118000385/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hui Zhang & Wenjing Zhou & Donglan Zhang, 2022. "Direct Medical Costs of Parkinson’s Disease in Southern China: A Cross-Sectional Study Based on Health Insurance Claims Data in Guangzhou City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(6), pages 1-19, March.
    2. Chi Shen & Qiwei Deng & Sha Lai & Liu Yang & Dantong Zhao & Yaxin Zhao & Zhongliang Zhou, 2024. "New evidence on supplier-induced demand in China’s public tertiary hospitals: is the cost of hospitalization higher in the off-season?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 25(6), pages 951-962, August.
    3. Wang, Tianyu & Wen, Ke & Gao, Qiuming & Sun, Ruochen, 2023. "Small money, big change: The distributional impact of differentiated doctor's visit fee on healthcare utilization," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 339(C).
    4. Liu, Kai & Zhang, Qian & He, Alex Jingwei, 2021. "The impacts of multiple healthcare reforms on catastrophic health spending for poor households in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:hecopl:v:15:y:2020:i:1:p:56-71_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/hep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.