Author : Yan Chen
Release : 2017-01-26
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 250/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Health Care Financing in China by : Yan Chen

Download or read book Health Care Financing in China written by Yan Chen. This book was released on 2017-01-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Health Care Financing in China: What Lessons China Can Learn From Other Countries on Healthcare Reform?" by Yan, Chen, 陈龑, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Background China never stops taking effort to reform its health care system. Health care financing, which is one of the essential control knobs to health care system, has significant influences on the sustainability of the health system, the quality of services it delivers, the health status of the population as well as the success of the whole health care reform process. Objectives This article aims to summarize the evolution of China's health care financing system, its current situation and challenges, discuss what lessons China can learn from the successful experiences or unsuccessful pitfalls of others countries on its health care financing reform. Methods Articles were searched through PubMed and CNKI. Further relevant articles were identified by searching the citations listed in retrieved articles manually. 96 articles were reviewed. Statistics about China's health care system were mainly from government white paper, SHA technical paper, Chinese government websites and WHO website. The information about the performance of health care systems in other countries was mainly from OECD database and WHO website. Results In China, insufficient government expenditure and high out-of-pocket payments; social health insurance providing limited risk protection, with low-level risk pooling; escalation of costs; inefficient financing resources allocation in providers; disparities among regions and provinces all lead to the inequity and inefficiency of the health care financing system and create heavy financial burden on patients. Based on experiences from other countries, the total health expenditure in China could take an even larger proportion of GDP in the future; it is reasonable to increase general government expenditure to further reduce the household out-of-pocket payment and provide financial protection and ensure equity; expanding services coverage and proportion of the costs covered, gradually merging the risk-pool units and different schemes can make social health insurance a more powerful tool to make sure people's access to basic health care; a new payment mechanism and stricter supervision on supply side can effectively contain the escalation of the costs; government should inject more funding to front-line institutions and the function of primary care in China can be stimulated by a good primary health care delivery system, in which the role of primary care provider is clearly defined as the gatekeeper of the health care system, with a proper referral mechanism; more responsibility should be taken by central government to allocate financing resources based on the fiscal capability of local governments; Chinese government should foresee the demand of aging population and take actions before it is too late. Conclusion It is consensus that China's health care reform is heading at the right direction. However, there are a lot of problems in China health care financing system remaining to be solved. Health care financing system varies greatly in each country and there is no perfect health care financing system in the world. Thus no single country can be one hundred percent copied by China. But general principles and one or some most successful and advanced portions of other countries' health care financing systems can still be used as references by China after further assessment. Unsuccessful oversea experiences are also