Can Internet Use Reduce Medical Expenses For The Elderly In Rural Areas?

With the intensification of aging in China,the medical problems of middle-aged and elderly people have been receiving much attention.Due to the shortage of medical resources and the relatively backward economic development in rural areas,the medical needs of the elderly in rural areas cannot be met,affecting their daily lives.There are many factors influencing medical expenditure.Existing research mainly focuses on demographic characteristics,medical insurance,etc.,but relatively few studies have been conducted from the perspective of the Internet.With the continuous development of Internet technology,medical methods have also undergone changes.The Internet can provide a more convenient and efficient medical platform for rural middle-aged and elderly people,breaking through space and time constraints,improving medical efficiency,reducing human and material consumption during the medical treatment process,thereby reducing medical expenses,and helping to improve the health and living standards of rural middle-aged and elderly people.Therefore,it is particularly important to focus research on whether Internet use can reduce medical expenses for the elderly in rural areas.Based on the 2018 China Household Tracking Survey(CFPS)data,this article proposes the main hypothesis 1: The use of the Internet has reduced medical expenses for rural middle-aged and elderly people,and the main hypothesis 2: Medical cognition plays a mediating role in the impact of Internet use on medical expenses for rural middle-aged and elderly people.The Ordered Probit regression model was used to analyze the impact of Internet use on medical expenses of rural middle-aged and elderly people,and the average marginal effects of Internet use variables and control variables on medical expenses of rural middle-aged and elderly people were calculated to explain the marginal effects.In order to test whether the results have robustness,the method of replacing data is used for robustness testing,making the results more robust and reliable.On this basis,the PSM propensity matching score method is used to solve the endogenous problem.Through the intermediary effect,we further analyzed the impact mechanism.Finally,we also analyzed the different impacts of Internet use on medical expenses for different individual characteristics.We also analyzed whether the individual characteristics of respondents can reduce the heterogeneity of medical expenses for rural middle-aged and elderly people.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The use of the Internet has reduced medical expenses for the elderly in rural areas.(2)The increase in spare time online time has led to an increase in medical expenses for middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas.(3)There are mediating variables in the impact of Internet use on medical expenses of rural middle-aged and elderly people.(4)Among the control variables,except whether there are various types of medical insurance and whether they retire,other control variables have a significant impact on the medical expenditure of rural middle-aged and elderly people.Gender,happiness,intelligence level,and whether there are government subsidies have a significant negative impact,while age,education level,spouse status,exercise frequency,and family size have a significant positive impact on the medical expenditure.From the above results,it can be seen that there is a significant impact between Internet use and medical expenses of rural middle-aged and elderly people.With the increase in the importance of Internet information and the frequency of Internet use,medical expenses of rural middle-aged and elderly people decrease,while there is a positive and significant relationship between leisure time and medical expenses of rural middle-aged and elderly people,that is,excessive leisure time online will have the effect of "too much as too little.".Based on this foundation,this article proposes the following recommendations: 1.Improve the Internet usage rate of rural middle-aged and elderly people.2.Establish an efficient Internet medical platform 3.Advocate the rational use of the Internet by rural middle-aged and elderly people.