China

Key research question:

Can the New Cooperative Medical Care System (NCMS) and the Medical Financial Assistance system (MFA) work for the poor in China?

China is currently at the initial stage of constructing its rural health insurance. The New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) cannot benefit the poor by itself; on the contrary, the inequitable nature of social insurance is more beneficial to the non-poor. With a combination of low income and low prevalence of insurance cover in rural areas of China , it is impossible to break the vicious circle between poverty and illness.

The Chinese research team

The Chinese research team for Future Health Systems will explore effective ways of combining the NCMS and the MFA. Underlying the construction of the future rural heath system in China are questions about how best to promote the development of the two schemes and strengthen their links. Another question is how to improve access to and utilization of the health service by the poor. This research will be focused on the design of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) and Medical Assistance (MA) and how the two schemes can be linked to benefit the Chinese rural poor.

The research will study three aspects of the two schemes:

1. operation of the schemes at micro-level,
2. provider behaviour and
3. regulatory context at macro-level.

In order to study the three aspects of the two schemes, the China FHS-RPC team will choose 6 (3 pairs) of counties to be the research subjects and compare them to find out effective ways to integrate or link up NCMS and MFA.