The relationship between urban resident basic medical insurance and health utilization of the urban unemployed in China.
详细信息
文摘
This paper explores how the launch of the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) program is related to the changes in health utilization for the unemployed urban residents. Using repeated cross-sectional data from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) in 2006 and 2009,this paper conducts the differences-in-differences methodology to analyze how URBMI is associated with the usage rate of several health outcomes,including preventive care,formal medical care,and informal medical care. The key findings include: i) URBMI is associated with a significant increase in the utilization of formal medical care for the unemployed group relative to the employed group； ii) URBMI is insignificantly associated with a relative decrease in preventive care usage and informal medical care usage； and iii)the introduction of URBMI successfully increases more than twice of its enrollment rate for the unemployed group relative to the employed group. However,it does not improve the overall insurance enrollment rate for the unemployed group.