A Comparative Study On The Poverty Reduction Effect Of Basic Medical Insurance And Commercial Health Insurance

Since the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the strategic concept of building a well-off society in all respects has entered the final stage.As a key strategy,poverty alleviation has attracted attention from the whole society.The Central Document No.1 in 2019 stated that it is necessary to complete the task of poverty alleviation,reduce poverty and prevent the poor from returning to poverty.Therefore,study how to help the poverty alleviation policy achieve the expected results has important theoretical and practical significance in the current situation.According to the data of the registered Cards issued by the State Council Office of Poverty Alleviation,the proportion of poverty or poverty return caused by illness has reached 44.1% in 2015,and the disease has become the leading cause of poverty in China.Since 1998,in order to reduce people’s medical burden,the state has gradually established a basic medical insurance system covering the whole population,and developed commercial health insurance through market mechanisms as a supplement.To explore the poverty reduction mechanism of medical insurance,and compare the differences between basic medical insurance and commercial health insurance in poverty reduction,this paper integrates health insurance into the human capital Solow model,analyzes the poverty reduction mechanism of basic medical insurance and commercial health insurance from a theoretical level,and then establishes multiple models such as feasible generalized least squares(FGLS)and panel threshold regression(PTR),and calculates the poverty reduction effect of medical insurance by the use of the inter-provincial panel data from 31 regions in 2008 to 2017.The results shows: Firstly,both basic medical insurance and commercial health insurance can theoretically play a role in poverty reduction,but the former is relatively more adjustable,and the market-oriented characteristics of commercial health insurance make it have no inherent motivation of poverty reduction;Secondly,both basic medical insurance and commercial health insurance have significant poverty reduction effects in practice,but the latter has a relatively stronger poverty reduction effect.At the same time,the poverty reduction effects of basic medical insurance and commercial health insurance have obvious regional heterogeneity,and the two are strongly complementary.The specific performance is that the poverty reduction effect of basic medical insurance decreases from east to west,while commercial healthinsurance increases from east to west;Thirdly,the poverty reduction of basic medical insurance has an income threshold effect,and its poverty reduction for low-income groups is weaker.As income levels increase,the poverty reduction effect of basic medical insurance increases.In addition,the study also finds that poverty reduction at the national and regional levels is affected by resource endowments such as economics,education,health care,and population.The differences in the development of the regions’ own resources,on the one hand,lead to a differentiated pattern of regional poverty,and on the other hand give more adjustable space for poverty reduction policies.Therefore,it may be a feasible path to push forward deep poverty alleviation at current time by promoting the comprehensive coverage and internal overall optimization of basic medical insurance,strengthening the poverty reduction effect of commercial health insurance,building a multi-level medical security system and a comprehensive supporting system,optimizing the allocation of resources such as economy,industry,health care and education among different regions,and then implementing targeted policies as well as strengthening regional poverty reduction so as to promote comprehensive poverty reduction and to improve overall poverty reduction efficiency.