Reaearch On The Ex-ante Moral Hazard In The New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme

In order to improve the Rural residents' welfare,reduce the phenomenon of "disease poverty".Since 2003,New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme has been piloted in rural areas in China,and it has rapidly become the most covered medical insurance among rural residents.With the increase in coverage of health insurance,the cost of access to medical services is reducing.However,the participants also have the potential to reduce their awareness of disease and change their living habits,which means "Ex-ante moral hazard".This paper is based on the data of China Health and Nutrition Survey(CHNS)in 2004 and 2009.I use the fixed effect model,and the rural residents who were not participated NCMS in 2004 and 2009 were treated as control group,the rural residents were who were participated NCMS in 2009 treated as experimental group.Matching the data with a propensity score by Kernel matching.On the basis of the matching data,difference-in-differences method is used to study whether the acquisition of NCMS can trigger Ex-ante moral hazard.In this paper,three variables are used as proxy variables for the moral hazard.First is the usage of preventive care.Second,smoking and drinking behavior.The third is health awareness.The results showed that the NCMS has obvious ex-ante moral hazard: the probability of smoking increased by 0.4 percentage point.The number of smoking increased by 0.171 per day.The probability of drinking increased by 0.3 percentage point.The number of drinking days increased by 0.335 days.In the score of health awareness,the participants scored a significant decrease of 0.009 point.At the same time,the empirical results show that there is obvious heterogeneity in the ex-ante moral hazard on the NCMS,and the moral hazard is more obvious in the rural residents with better health.Finally,based on the conclusion of this paper,we put forward corresponding suggestions on how to improve the NCMS mechanism.