Health Insurance Generosity and Healthcare Utilization - An Evaluation of Integrating Urban and Rural Residents Medical Insurance in China
How does generosity of health insurance impact health utilization? In this thesis, I estimated the impacts of the integration of urban and rural health insurance in China, in terms of health spending, healthcare services utilization, and health outcomes to understand the question. Using collected policy data and household survey data, I construct stagger difference-in-difference and event study models to evaluation the policy. I find that the policy increased the inpatient reimbursement rate by around 4% for rural populations but find that the integration had limited impacts on healthcare utilization and health outcomes.