Abstract
Despite achieving significant developments in terms of health services in China, the reform of public services has yet to show relevant results, such as how to establish health services in line with the socialist market economic system. With an overemphasis on market-oriented and industrialized medical care, the efficiency and equity of the health reform have even been subject to decline to some extent. The high cost and lack of accessibility of medical treatment caused by rapidly rising medical expenses has become an economic and social hot topic of general concern. This article mainly addresses the causes and roots of the challenges and problems faced by health services in the course of economic transformation. It provides some opinions and suggestions on how to enhance the efficiency and fairness in the development of the health sector in a socialist market economic system, and how to bring into full play the role of medical care and health security in the construction of a harmonious society.
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Notes
- 1.
The first group of pilot counties (cities and districts) initiated in China in 2003 amounted to 304, which increased to 333 by 2004; by 2005, every prefecture (city) had at least one pilot county. Seethe news report “Pilot work on new rural cooperative medical insurance has scored obvious results” on the Ministry of Health website http://www.moh.gov.cn/index.aspx.
- 2.
According to the estimate of Dezhi (2005), from 1978 to 2003, the average elastic coefficient of per capita health cost versus per capita GDP in China was 1.29.
- 3.
A WHO Macroeconomics and Health (2002) report held that only USD 14 billion was invested in the intervention of infectious diseases in the most under-developed countries of the world, with which the death of 8 million people could be prevented each year, and 330 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) could be extended. According to conservative estimate, each DALY got USD 563 and the direct economic benefits of 330 million DALYs amounted to USD 186 billion each year, which amount could be several times higher.
- 4.
This article is published in China Industrial Economics, Vol. 12, 2005.
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Wang, Y. (2017). Health Problems and Health Equality in the Transitional Period. In: Social Security in China: On the Possibility of Equitable Distribution in the Middle Kingdom. Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5643-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5643-7_3
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