Research Results from Central University of Finance and Economics Update Knowledge of Sustainability Research (Concentration and Persistence of Healthcare Spending: Evidence from China)

2021 JUN 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Economics Daily Report -- Fresh data on sustainability research are presented in a new report. According to news reporting out of Beijing, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “One way to reduce healthcare costs is to target the high spenders who remain persistently high in cost over time.”

Financial supporters for this research include Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality; National Natural Science Foundation of China; Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Central University of Finance and Economics: “Using claims data from China between 2010 to 2014, we sought to identify the level of concentration in spending and the proportion of spenders whose costs remain high over five years. Using a transition matrix and a linear regression strategy, we find that the top 10% of the spenders account for more than 50% of total expenditures. Of the individuals who were in the top 10% in 2010, 33.6% remained in the top 10% one year later and 23.6% were still in that category even four years later. Past spending plays a major role in the dynamic of health spending. A 10% increase in expenditure is associated with an increase of 0.36% to 1.33% of spending in the future. Persistence has some heterogeneity in terms of age, gender, and income level.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Many diseases have strong predictive power for future spending. Research on the concentration and persistence of health expenditures will inform policymakers in terms of controlling costs and providing protection for catastrophic spending.”

For more information on this research see: Concentration and Persistence of Healthcare Spending: Evidence from China. Sustainability, 2021,13(5761):5761. (Sustainability - http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability). The publisher for Sustainability is MDPI AG.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/su13115761.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Hua Chen, School of Insurance, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 102206, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Xiaobo Peng, Menghan Shen.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)