Can the New Health-care Reform Plan Relieve the Out-of-pocket Payments Effectively in China

摘要

The out-of-pocket payments has a close correlation with "the high cost to access medical service" (commonly known in Chinese as "Kan Bing Gui").In the new health-care reform plan, the government wants to relieve the out-of-pocket payments by increasing the government investment. Using the data of total health expenditures, government expenditure, social expenditure and related economic index such as GDP and income distribution, combined with the alleged additional government investment, this paper analyzes in what extent the government investment can impact the ratio between out-of-pocket payments and total health expenditures, out-of-pocket payments and the disposable income. The result firstly shows that the additional government investment is the necessary condition of the reform, if the investment can be input fully it will be very effective in the short term, however, the current government expenditure and social expenditure are sufficient conditions, if we want to keep the long term effect, they are also indispensable. From the test, we found because of the health decentralization, local governments have under-invested, in the future, the central government must bear more financial responsibility on the health and help the local governments to invest fully; Secondly, the income distribution has a great influence on the real burden of people's health spending, we must speed up income distribution so that the income will be more balanced between urban and rural areas and among different industries. In this way, the problem of "the high cost to access medical service" can be solved gradually.