New Health Insurance Findings from China Pharmaceutical University Discussed (Age or health status: which influences medical insurance enrollment…

Insurance Weekly News

New Health Insurance Findings from China Pharmaceutical University Discussed (Age or health status: which influences medical insurance enrollment greater?)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Health Insurance. According to news originating from Nanjing, People's Republic of China, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) for peasantries implemented in 2003 and the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) for the urban unemployed implemented in 2007 have many similarities. They both apply the financing mode of individual premiums plus government's subsidies, and the voluntary enrollment."

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from China Pharmaceutical University, "The Chinese government plans to integrate these two systems and build a unified basic medical insurance system for the unemployed in order to achieve the medical equity and increase the general health level. Thus, to analyze the main influencing factors of the enrollment of the urban unemployed and rural residents is very important for improving the system and securing the stability of the system during the transition. The study uses data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) and adopts logistic regression models to test which factors influence the enrollment of the URBMI and the NCMS under the background of rather high enrollment rate of Chinese basic medical insurances and strong fiscal support of the Chinese government, especially whether health status or age influences enrollment of these two insurances greater. There is indeed some adverse selection in the URBMI and the NCMS. Whether the individual has chronic diseases have significant influence on enrollments of both the urban unemployed and rural residents, while whether the individual got ill in last four weeks just influences enrollments of the urban unemployed. Age influences enrollment greater than health status. The older the insured are, the larger the enrollment rates are. Because of the active support for basic medical insurances of the Chinese government, the enrollment performance of the urban unemployed and rural residents has already changed. When implementing the new policy, the government should pay attention to the willingness to enroll in and the change of enrollment performance of the insured. Therefore, under the policy of voluntary enrollment, every coordinated province and city should enlarge the proportion of young people to insuring group, optimizing the age structure, and the financing proportion of governments and individuals should be measured properly."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "With the increasing of governments' subsidies, the proportion of individual's premiums should also be increased."

For more information on this research see: Age or health status: which influences medical insurance enrollment greater? Journal of Global Health, 2016;6(2):020801.

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from W. Xu, School of International Pharmaceutical Business, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include G.J. Cai, G.N. Li, J.J. Cao, Q.H. Shi and J. Bai.

Keywords for this news article include: Asia, Nanjing, Health Insurance, Medical Insurance, People's Republic of China.