Study On The Medical Social Security System For The Impoverished Group In China’s Rural Area

Poverty is a major problem in the development of the Chinese society. Although the high-speed economic development in recent years has created huge wealth for the society, we are still facing serious poverty problems, especially in the rural area. Since the21st century, the government has introduced a series of new policies to the production, education and medical fields in the rural areas, such as the reduction of agricultural tax, the abolishment of the compulsory education fees and the establishment of the new rural cooperative medical care system and so on. To help the impoverished population to get rid of poverty, we can not only give them financial assistance, but also help them to increase the ability to resist risks. However, if we want to increase the ability to resist risks, to increase their income is not the only way; we also need the development and improvement of the social security system. Among all the social security services, the medical care is crucial, because we can only eliminate the poverty from the source if we could reduce the poverty due to illness.The research topic of this paper is the medical social security system for the impoverished group in rural area. This research mainly adopts literature study method and interviews for data collection. The author selected10impoverished people in Rizhao city, including5people living in absolute poverty, and5people living in relative poverty. During the interviews, the author deeply investigated their physical condition, medical practices and the cognizance of existing medical security system. At the same time, the author visited2civil servants in charge of the new rural cooperative medical work and the medical assistance work respectively,3country doctors and4village chiefs. Through the interviews with them, the author learned the current rural poverty population’s difficulties in terms of health care and governments and the society’s assistance and support to them. In the respect of data analysis, first of all, through the content analysis of the existing literature and relevant government departments’files, the author mastered the current health care measures, the implementation status and hot issues for the poor, and then found and put forward new problems. Second of all, through the semi-structured interviews with the impoverished people, the author learned the demand for medical care and the cognizance and use of the current medical security, and found problems to be solved. During the interviews, the author firstly wined the interviewees’trust and recognitions, and then contact them without any theoretical assumptions and sentimental color, trying to understand the most real and natural, deep inner thoughts from the interviewees. The sampling method in this article is mainly non-probabilistic sampling. As for the data analysis method, the author mainly adopted the qualitative analysis.Using the first-hand information collected from the interviews, the author made a detailed description of the medical social security system for the impoverished population in the rural area of Rizhao city and analyzed the cogitation and use of the current medical security system. The author introduced the three component parts of the current medical security system for the impoverished group, i.e., the new rural cooperative medical system, the medical assistance system, and the major disease medical insurance system. According to the analysis of the policies and the interviews, the author developed discussions about the situations and challenges of current medical security system for the impoverished group. The study shows a series of problems. From the impoverished group’s participation in the new rural cooperative medical system’s aspect, the intention of participating in the new rural cooperative medical system is influenced by their trust of the government; the allowance for the participation fees only covers the absolute poverty families, not the whole impoverished population. From the aspect of the service condition of the new rural cooperative medical system, the lack of information causes the unfamiliarity for the procedure of the medical security system; both the new rural cooperative medical system and the medical assistant system’s subsidy levels are low; the staff’s working enthusiasm are low due to the system design; the new rural cooperative medical system faces a dilemma of effect and price. From the aspect of medical assistance system, the huge scale of working causes the unfairness in the medical assistance system; the post-assistance mechanism leaves us with difficulties in preventing the poverty.To solve these problems, the author puts forward a series of discussions. For instance, the openness of the medical assistant system, the construction and perfecting of the medical care facilities and service, the joint of the new rural cooperative medical system and the medical assistant system, the remission and prevention of the poverty in medical security system and so on. Furthermore, the author made some policies suggestions including propaganda of the current medical security system, improving the cooperation between different departments, improving the transparency and simplifying the procedure of the medical security system, increasing the finance input in the medical security system, building a high-quality team for the rural area medical security system, etc..