Policy Recommendations to Improve Health Care in China

Since the economic reform in 1978, China’s health system moved from a commune-based system to a market-driven system. This drastic change resulted in various market failures, including cost inflation, perverse incentives for providers and supplier-induced demand for unnecessary care, increasing inequality in access across regions based on economic status, and other problems. Though China attempted to correct its policy mistakes and reform its inadequate and unjust health care system in order to provide basic universal health coverage for all over the past decade, not everyone has equal access to the same quality of affordable health care, especially the non-resident workers, the poor urban residents, and the rural population. This research uses the framework of the five intellectual tasks to assess the history of China’s health policies, the political economy factors that have driven and shaped the reform of China’s health system, the likely projections of policy options, and potential alternatives for policymakers