| The online health care services have gradually become an important component of health care services with the popularity of the electronic technologies. We studied the impact of Medicare policy adjustments on the demand of online health care using time series data from a major city in China. We find that urban and rural Medicare integration policy have a positive effect on local free online consultation and negative effect on nonlocal paid telephone consultation. The impact on local paid telephone consultation and nonlocal free online consultation services is insignificant. And nonlocal reimbursement policy has a negative effect on local online healthcare services and nonlocal paid telephone consultation, and positive effect on nonlocal free online consultation. This study shows that the online healthcare market is affected by offline Medicare policy. Its role could be either substitution or complement depending on the patients' relative cost to approach preferred offline clinic services.Through the effects of medical insurance policy on the online healthcare services, the study provides policy makers some important advice. In order to achieve the optimal allocation of medical resource, decision makers should make sure that online free consultation help to solve the basic medical problems. So application of our study in the area of Medicare policy research, policy maker can seek for a balance of traditional and online health care resource allocation among different areas of China through adjustment of Medicare policy. In addition, we also found that, in order to maximize the welfare of patients, online medical service platform should make reasonable depend on the Medicare policy environment. |
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