The essential cause resulting in "high personal medical expenditure":Decreasing Finance for Health Care from the Government / 中国医学伦理学

ABSTRACT

With the development of income per capita,"high personal medical expenditure" shows the wider of disease risk,which is resulted from the increasing medical payment and imperfect risk pooling.The former that is related with the excess delivery of advance medical technology and drug has been a dominating reason since 1980.And the imperfect risk pooling means the imperfect social medical insurance,of which the government should take charge.However,influenced by the reform policies of the economic systems,similar to all the transitional economies reducing the government role in healthcare financing,China has put an increasing emphasis on the payroll tax-based social insurance system and out-pockets payment,moving away from a predominantly general revenue-based financing system under the old command economy.In a conclusion,the Chinese Government should make clear the financing function,and replace fee-for-service(FFS) payment according to the distorted pricing system with aggregated pre-payment for patients covered by social insurance to mitigate the incentive for cost escalation.Meanwhile,the target of the new medical reform that should resolve the problem of high personal medical expenditure is demanding and perfecting the social medical insurance with wider risk pooling.