The Study On Supply Entities And Modes Of Urban Medical Aids In China

The dramatic pace of urbanization and industrialization in China has not only accelerated the prosperity in economy, but also significantly enlarged the gap between the rich and the poor in the urban areas, resulting in a significant increase in the number of new poor urban population. Their accessibility to the medical services decreases a lot due to the recent marketing-directed reformation in the urban medical system and the delay in establishing associated social medical aid systems. Although the construction of an effective urban medical aid system has already been put into the government's current agenda, it is still far from enough to perform the social medical aid service by government only. The only practical solution to this problem is to converge the efforts from the government, the market and the 3^rd part (together called '3 entities') to construct a multi-level and multi-form urban medical aid system. This thesis tries to study the above-mentioned different entities as urban medical aid supplier in terms of their features, definition, functionalities and development trends. Firstly, after intensive literature research and comparison, the theoretical support to confirm the rightness of putting the '3 entities' as the major supplier of urban medical aids has been set up based upon the Public Product Theories. Secondly, the other countries' experiences in medical aid systems have been studied with some enlightenment to China's current process of constructing and developing the medical aid systems. Thirdly, the motivation, obligation, characteristics and the future trends of the '3 entities' in providing the medical aids have been studies by using inductive and other analytical methods. Finally, the thesis reaches the following conclusions: the government is the responsible entity of urban medical aid supply as the constructor of the medical aid system, the distributor of the medical resources and the protector of the justice of medical services; the third part and the private hospital are indispensable complementary parts of the urban medical aid system; the policy support and financial assistance are necessary to enable the private charity hospitals to continuously perform their roles in the medical aid system; the 3^rd part is a quite helpful complementation to the government and the private sector in the medial aid system. In all, the medical aids with different forms and different features from the '3 entities' can constitute an effective urban medical aid system in China.