Study of the security provided by health insurance for senior urban population / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the impacts of health insurance schemes on the equity of health services access and the financial protection for disease risk exposure of the elderly population.Methods The descriptive statistics method and econometrics models.Results Full coverage of the health insurance fails to eliminate the inequity in health services access.For example,the two-week clinical visit rate and hospitalization rate of the high-income group are 1.57 and 1.21 times higher than those of the low-income group;the disease risk economic protection function of the health insurance falls below requirement,as the out-of-pocket ratio is as high as 30%~40%;the security for urban workers is far better than urban residents,as the utilization level of outpatient service and hospitalization service of senior workers are 1.18 and 1.33 times that of senior urban residents respectively.Conclusion Despite the full population coverage of health insurance schemes,it is a long way to go before the goal of universal health coverage. Future reforms should aim at filling the financial gaps between different health insurance schemes.