The Study Of Equity In New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme

As an essential component of Rural Social Security Plan, New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) is a prominent part of Rural Health Work in new times. NCMS can help with the solution to deficient investment in Rural Medical Treatment (RMT) , the increase of utilization efficiency of rural medical resources and the promotion of coordinate development of RMT. Besides, NCMS plays a significant role in the sustainable development of rural economy, improvement of peasants' living standard and the absolute solution to issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers. However, since NCMS was put into practice, there still exist a lot of difficulties to be solved, two of which are called "Bottlenecks of Cooperative Medical Scheme (CMS)"---the first is the difficulty in financing and the low standard of financing; the second is that only a minority benefits from CMS, and the standard is low as well. Scholars universally hold that the two problems directly affect the development of Cooperative Medical Treatment, and the core problem is of equity.Purpose: To evaluate Equity of New Cooperative Medical Treatment (ENCMT) from the equity angle; adopting Economics Index to evaluate ENCMT from three aspects---Equity in Health(EH),Equity in Health Service Utilization (EHSU) and Equity in Health Financing (EHF) ;to provide theoretic foundations for further improving and popularizing New Cooperative Medical Treatment.Method:(1)Income Groups: Consulting the definition of different income groups by State Statistics Bureau, and basing on average income, this study divides the people into 5 groups---the lowest income group, low income group, the medium income group, the high income group and the highest income group, each group about 20% of the population.(2)Evaluating EH with Concentration Index (CI) ---the rate of 2 weeks prevalence and the rate of chronic illness prevalence; Evaluating EHSU with the indices---the rate of patients without physician contact within 2 weeks, the rate of persons without hospital admission within 12 months.(3)Choosing Fairness of Financing Contribution (FFC) ,which was posed in World Health Report (WHR) by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000,to evaluate EHF.Results: This study indicates that, the low income group's medical demand indices of the rate of 2 weeks prevalence, the rate of chronic illness prevalence, etc are relatively higher, as well as their rate of patients without physician contact within 2 weeks and their rate of persons without hospital admission with 12 months. The higher the income is, the lower the rate of patients...