Background: Insisting on equity is one of the basic principles behind deepening health care reform. China's new rural cooperative medical insurance (NRCMI) and urban residents' basic medical insurance (URBMI) are both “equalized” in fundraising and reimbursement. This paper studies the benefits of equity under such "equalized" system designation.
Methods: The data analysed in this paper are from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2016, implemented by the Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University. A two-part model and a binary choice model are used in the empirical test.
Results: An empirical test found that high-income people benefit more from basic medical insurance than low-income people. Mechanism analysis found that high-income people have higher medical insurance applicability and can utilize better health care. Since low-income people are unhealthier, an inequity in benefits will exacerbate health inequity. We also found that the benefits equity of URBMI is better than that of NRCMI.
Conclusions: The government needs to pay more attention to the issue of medical insurance inequity. We can consider allowing for different income groups to pay different premiums according to their medical expenses or allowing for different income groups to apply different reimbursement policies.