Background: A large number of internal immigrants in the process of urbanization in China is Migrant Parents, the aging group who move to urban area involuntarily to support their family. They are more vulnerable economically and physically than the younger migrants. However, the fragmentation of rural and urban health insurance schemes divided by “hukou” household registration system limit migrant’s access to healthcare services in their resident location. Some provinces have started to consolidate the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance and the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme as one Integrated Medical Insurance Schemes (IMIS) to reduce the disparity between different schemes and increase the health care utilization of migrants.
Results: Using China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we used OLS for regression in models. We found that the migrant parents who are covered by the IMIS are more likely to choose inpatient service and to seek medical treatment in the migrant destination, by improving the convenience of medical expense reimbursement and relieving the economic pressure.
Conclusions: The potential mechanisms of our results could be that IMIS alleviates the difficulty of seeking medical care in migrant destinations by improving the convenience of medical expense reimbursement and relieving the economic constrain.