China´s Healthcare System

The new epoch in China’s history of 20th century, and in particular for China’s health care system is considered early 1980-es, just after the free market economy reform was introduced in the country. To understand what the impacts of these reforms on health care system were, it is necessary to have a brief overview of the health system, which was operating before market-economy reform in the country. During the so called “planned economy period” of China from 1949-1978 every person had an equal access to basic health care services. In urban areas, the workers were receiving health services based on subsidies from State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), as well as the family members of SOE employees and the retirees, which was called Labor Insurance Scheme (LIS), and for the other urban resident social groups like governmental employees, disabled veterans, teachers and others the Government Insurance Scheme (GIS) was applied (Blomqvist 2008; Chu 2002).
Similarly, in rural areas, the health care services were organized and financed through the Cooperative Medical System (CMS), as a part of Collective agriculture production system and social services. The main characteristic of CMS by its collective financing, prepayment system and health service organization through a three tier system with a vertical administration including “barefoot doctors” referred as providers of primary health care and prevention services, township health centers – second level of health care facilities and county hospitals - third level of health care facilities. The funding scheme of CMS included premium assessment, depending on benefit structure of the plan and the local community’s economic status, collective welfare fund and subsidies from the upper level gove...

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... inputted to STATA 11 and a data set was created.
2.4. List of main variables
For the study dependent variable was chosen the Utilization rate (%) of hospital beds. As independent variables NRCMS, URBMI, UEBMI, GDP growth rate (%), Total health expenditure (%) of GDP, Government health expenditures.
2.5. Data analysis
Main data is analyzed with STATA 11. The descriptive analysis of the dependant variable Utilization rate (%) of hospital beds show that it has a Mean of 70,22 with a Standard deviation of 10.01, number of observations (years) is 24. Time-series line plots are used to observe and interpret the trends of utilization of health care services during specified time period (time unit= one year). Line plots are also used to observe the trends of changes of independent variables in the same time period as the changes of dependent variable were observed.