Catastrophic Outpatient Health Payments and Health Payment-induced Poverty under China's New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme

Wei Yang

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2015, vol. 37, issue 1, 64-85

Abstract: In 2003, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) was initiated in China to provide rural inhabitants with financial protection against health risks. The benefit package was extended to outpatient care in 2007. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey of 2009, this paper examines the relationship between the households participating in the NCMS and the level and distribution of catastrophic health payments and health payment-induced poverty resulting from outpatient care. The study finds no significant difference in terms of catastrophic health payments and health payment-induced poverty before and after NCMS reimbursement. The out-of-pocket payments (OOP) are concentrated disproportionately among the poor even after the insurance reimbursement. This heavy burden of OOP payments has become a poverty trap for the poor. This study calls for a more comprehensive insurance and effective insurance package.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppu017 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:37:y:2015:i:1:p:64-85.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy is currently edited by Timothy Park, Tomislav Vukina and Ian Sheldon

More articles in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().