DOI: 10.7664/CHE20140101
Discussion on Moral Hazard and Its Influences under China’s Health Care Reform
LI Ling
LI Ying
YUAN Jia
Abstract：It is a well-recognized difficult empirical task to disentangle the moral hazard effect from adverse selection impact by using the health insurance data in the empirical research of health economics. In the research, the unique social experiment in China’s health care reform, which enables cleanly identify moral hazard is applied. Using individual-level hospital patient data, it estimates the impact of the reimbursement rate increase on Chinese patients’ demand for health care service. Difference-in-Difference Propensity Score Matching approach and find strong evidence for moral hazard are approached. For instance: if the reimbursement rate increases by 5% while other factors remain the same, the corresponding health care service expenditure will increase by around 7%. The finding also has important implication for policy making. Chinese government pledges to lower the average individual out-of-pocket cost from the current 37.5% of total health care service cost to 30 % in 5 years. According to the former estimation, if the goal of the policy is successfully achieved, moral hazard problem itself will cost Chinese health care system around 200 billion yuan.
Keywords：China’s health care reformmoral hazarddifference-in-differencepropensity score matching
Publication Date：2014-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：6( 5-10 )