Three essays on the effects of health policy on health care financing, demand, and provision
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation evaluates the effects of a rural health insurance program in China and tort reforms in the United States. Rural residents’ health status, health-seeking behaviors, financial burden, physicians’ practices, and total hospitalization charges are discussed in the three chapters respectively. The first chapter estimates the 6–12 year effects of the New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) on reducing the financial burden of rural residents and improving their health status. The NCMS is a national health insurance system for rural residents in China. The primary goals of this program are to alleviate medical impoverishment and improve health. The implementation of the NCMS can be divided into two stages, a pilot stage, and a full implementation stage. The pilot stage ran from 2003 to 2007. The full implementation stage began in 2008. Insurance coverage rates and reimbursement levels of the two stages are substantially different. Although numerous studies reported the effects of the expanded insurance coverage at the pilot stage, we know little about the longer-term effects of the NCMS program. The time span of my research covers both the pilot stage and the full implementation stage. This study utilizes the panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. It is a nationwide longitudinal survey project and mainly focuses on the health and nutritional status of the population. In the survey years, the coverage rate of the program at the individual level reached 93 percent. I apply the individual fixed-effects strategy and the probit model with the Mundlak device estimation. Different from previous studies’ findings that there is no evidence that the scheme has reduced out-of-pocket spending, the result of this research shows that the NCMS has a significant effect on relieving the financial burden, as measured by out-of-pocket spending among patients. This effect could be explained by the fact that the reimbursement levels in the full implementation stag…
abstract: This dissertation evaluates the effects of a rural health insurance program in China and tort reforms in the United States. Rural residents’ health status, health-seeking behaviors, financial burden, physicians’ practices, and total hospitalization charges are discussed in the three chapters respectively. The first chapter estimates the 6–12 year effects of the New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) on reducing the financial burden of rural residents and improving their health status. The NCMS is a national health insurance system for rural residents in China. The primary goals of this program are to alleviate medical impoverishment and improve health. The implementation of the NCMS can be divided into two stages, a pilot stage, and a full implementation stage. The pilot stage ran from 2003 to 2007. The full implementation stage began in 2008. Insurance coverage rates and reimbursement levels of the two stages are substantially different. Although numerous studies reported the effects of the expanded insurance coverage at the pilot stage, we know little about the longer-term effects of the NCMS program. The time span of my research covers both the pilot stage and the full implementation stage. This study utilizes the panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. It is a nationwide longitudinal survey project and mainly focuses on the health and nutritional status of the population. In the survey years, the coverage rate of the program at the individual level reached 93 percent. I apply the individual fixed-effects strategy and the probit model with the Mundlak device estimation. Different from previous studies’ findings that there is no evidence that the scheme has reduced out-of-pocket spending, the result of this research shows that the NCMS has a significant effect on relieving the financial burden, as measured by out-of-pocket spending among patients. This effect could be explained by the fact that the reimbursement levels in the full implementation stag…
author: Xing, Yuying
language: en
keywords: insurance, health, financial burden, rural, China, C-section, tort reform, malpractice, liability pressure, patient mobility, demand-side
date published: 2022-01-12T22:34:47Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:53Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113128