Shandong University Reports Findings in Health Policy and Planning (Can decreased cost-sharing reduce the vulnerability of sick families to poverty? An analysis of the Multi-level Social Health Insurance Scheme in China): Health and Medicine – Health Policy and Planning

2022 OCT 03 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Health and Medicine - Health Policy and Planning is the subject of a report. According to news originating from Jinan, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “In recent years, China has been increasing social health insurance benefits to alleviate poverty due to illness. In 2015, China introduced the Critical Illness Insurance for patients with high out-of-pocket expenses as supplementary to the social health insurance, which categorised patients with different medical expenses into different cost-sharing policies.”

Financial supporters for this research include Shandong social science foundation, Humanities and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education, China, Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of China.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Shandong University, “We conducted a survey on households with high-cost patients in rural Shandong in 2019 and employed the instrumental variables estimation approach to determine how different cost-sharing measures affect households’ poverty vulnerability. We found that cost-sharing reduction significantly decreases the vulnerability of sick families to poverty. Moreover, we found that the positive effect is attributed to a reduction in health burden and household livelihood capital shocks. The vulnerability to poverty is still exceptionally high owing to the heavy health burden in rural China and other developing countries.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “The results of our study provide insights into poverty alleviation by improving social health insurance in developing economies.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Can decreased cost-sharing reduce the vulnerability of sick families to poverty? An analysis of the Multi-level Social Health Insurance Scheme in China. Health Policy and Planning, 2022. Health Policy and Planning can be contacted at: Oxford Univ Press, Great Clarendon St, Oxford OX2 6DP, England. (Oxford University Press - http://www.oup.com/; Health Policy and Planning - heapol.oxfordjournals.org)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Wenhao Fu, Centre for Health Management and Policy Research, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, 250012, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Shiju Dong, Zexuan Yu and Jiajia Li.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czac081. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Health Policy and Planning is: Oxford Univ Press, Great Clarendon St, Oxford OX2 6DP, England.

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