Research On The Root Causes And Solutions Of Expensive Medical Cost In China

Medical services guarantees people's health,and safeguards the most basic right and interests of people,namely,the right to existence,which is related to the construction of a harmonious socialist society.The publicly funded medical system,which was controlled by the government during the planned economy period,led to serious problems including enormous waste of resources,low standards of medical services and poor innovation ability.With the continuous and further development of the marketization brought from the reform and opening up,the government began to introduce market forces and gradually relaxed the price regulation of medical services.However,it has caused the public's difficulty in seeing a doctor and difficulty of expensive medical services,which has hindered people from seeking proper medical treatment,affected their physical health,and exacerbated the contradiction between doctors and patients.In recent years,with the advancement of technologies such as transportation and the Internet,the solution to the “difficulty in seeing a doctor” has achieved remarkable results.In contrast,China has taken various price-cutting methods in an attempt to ease the excessive increase in medical expenses,but “difficulty of expensive medical services” has not been fundamentally overcome which is due to the fact that the root causes have not been found,only achieving certain results in the short term.There rapid growth rate and high rate of personal medical expenses,the expensive drug prices that patients and medical insurance institutions have to pay,the unnecessary inspection and treatment fees and the unavoidable grey costs are still existing,which seriously restricts the improvement and development of the medical security in China.Based on the related literature review of domestic and international research,this article elaborates on the current situation and four characteristics of the problem of “expensive medical services” in China,from the perspective of public product pricing theory,the difficulty mentioned above is thoroughly analyzed and this research suggests that insufficient government investment,unsound medical service pricing mechanism as well as drug price control,improper medical insurance payment methods,and medical personnel's disguised medical pricing right arising from asymmetric information and policy loopholes are the root causes of China's expensive medical services.Based on the root causes analyzed,the author proposes that we should correspondingly increase the financial input,improve the price mechanism of medical services,implement the dynamic de-administration pricing of medical services,carry out a zero-discretion rate system all around,and use big data to formulate basic drug guidance price and also,change the payment methods of medical insurance to cut off the profit-driven possibilities of medical institutions and medical personnel.Meanwhile,through the supervision of the establishment of an information disclosure platform,the government can regain the leading position in regulating the price of medical services when medical institutions and medical personnel can actively cooperate to fundamentally solve the problem of “expensive medical services” in China,meeting the general public medical needs.