Health Care Transition in Urban China

Health Care Transition in Urban China

Author: Shenglan Tang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1351931334

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The on-going transition to a market economy in China is having a profound effect on health services. As a result, the government has made health one of the key policy areas, and there is now a general recognition of the need to reform urban health services. Multidisciplinary in scope, this exceptional volume draws on a prestigious report to explore how changes in health finance have affected the performance of urban health services in terms of equity and efficiency. Based on empirical evidence from the cities of Nantong, Jiangsu Province and Zibo, Shandong Province (selected for their innovative approach to health system development), the book offers an in-depth understanding of the relationship between transition, health reform and health system performance in urban settings. It features collaboration between European and Chinese academics and Chinese practitioners and officials, providing valuable background and contextual information on a complex system of healthcare, and presenting an analysis of policy impact and likely future direction.


China's Healthcare System and Reform

China's Healthcare System and Reform

Author: Lawton Robert Burns

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 744

ISBN-13: 1316738396

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This volume provides a comprehensive review of China's healthcare system and policy reforms in the context of the global economy. Following a value-chain framework, the 16 chapters cover the payers, the providers, and the producers (manufacturers) in China's system. It also provides a detailed analysis of the historical development of China's healthcare system, the current state of its broad reforms, and the uneasy balance between China's market-driven approach and governmental regulation. Most importantly, it devotes considerable attention to the major problems confronting China, including chronic illness, public health, and long-term care and economic security for the elderly. Burns and Liu have assembled the latest research from leading health economists and political scientists, as well as senior public health officials and corporate executives, making this book an essential read for industry professionals, policymakers, researchers, and students studying comparative health systems across the world.


Children’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China

Children’s Healthcare and Parental Media Engagement in Urban China

Author: Qian Gong

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-10-25

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1137498773

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This book analyses parental anxieties about their children’s healthcare issues in urban China, engaging with wider theoretical debates about modernity, risk and anxiety. It examines the broader social, cultural and historical contexts of parental anxiety by analysing a series of socio-economic changes and population policy changes in post-reform China that contextualise parental experiences. Drawing on Wilkinson’s (2001) conceptualisation linking individual’s risk consciousness to anxiety, this book analyses the situated risk experiences of parents’ and grandparents’, looking particularly into their engagement with various types of media. It studies the representations of health issues and health-related risks in a parenting magazine, popular newspapers, commercial advertising and new media, as well as parents’ and grandparents’ engagement with and response to these media representations. By investigating ‘a culture of anxiety’ among parents and grandparents in contemporary China, this book seeks to add to the scholarship of contemporary parenthood in a non- Western context.


Annual Report

Annual Report

Author: United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13:

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China's Changing Welfare Mix

China's Changing Welfare Mix

Author: Beatriz Carrillo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011-06-10

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1136838678

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This book draws attention to two neglected areas in the growing body of research on welfare in China: subnational variation and the changing mix of state and non-state provision. The contributors to this volume demonstrate the diversity of local welfare provision that lies behind broad national policies and programmes. Their focus on local diversity is particularly relevant to understanding the welfare system in China because national state programmes are so often organized by local governments in line with the specifics of their economic and social development. At the same time that social and economic development is itself independently creating an array of different conditions that shape non-state (family, business and third sector) welfare roles . Through chapters that draw on original research in eight provinces, the book adopts a ‘local’ perspective to illustrate and explain some of the transformations that are under way and discuss not only local government initiatives and programmes, but also the services and support provided by families, informal social networks and community or third sector organizations, as well as those delivered by private businesses on a commercial, for-profit basis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese society, social policy, and Chinese studies more widely. Beatriz Carrillo is Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Jane Duckett is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Politics at the University of Glasgow, UK


China's New Public Health Insurance

China's New Public Health Insurance

Author: Armin Müller

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-25

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1317230051

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Especially since the 2003 SARS crisis, China’s healthcare system has become a growing source of concern, both for citizens and the Chinese government. China’s once praised public health services have deteriorated into a system driven by economic constraints, in which poor people often fail to get access, and middle-income households risk to be dragged into poverty by the rising costs of care. The New Rural Co-operative Medical System (NRCMS) was introduced to counter these tendencies and constitutes the main system of public health insurance in China today. This book outlines the nature of the system, traces the processes of its enactment and implementation, and discusses its strengths and weaknesses. It argues that the contested nature of the fields of health policy and social security has long been overlooked, and reinterprets the NRCMS as a compromise between opposing political interests. Furthermore, it argues that structural institutional misfits facilitate fiscal imbalances and a culture of non-compliance in local health policy, which distort the outcomes of the implementation and limit the effectiveness of insurance. These dynamics also raise fundamental questions regarding the effectiveness of other areas of the comprehensive New Health Reform, which China has initiated to overhaul its healthcare system.


Informal Payments and Regulations in China's Healthcare System

Informal Payments and Regulations in China's Healthcare System

Author: Jingqing Yang

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-26

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9811021104

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This text addresses the key issue of informal payments, or ‘red packets’, in the Chinese Healthcare system. It considers how transactions take place at the clinical level as well as their regulation. Analysing the practice from the perspectives of institutions and power structure, it examines how institutional changes in the pre-reform and reform era have changed the power structure between medical professions, patients and the Party-state, and how these changes have given rise and perpetuate the practice. Drawing from qualitative data from interviews of medical professionals, the author recognises the medical profession as a major player in the health care system and presents their perception of the practice as the taker of ‘red packets’ and their interactions with the patient and the state surrounding the illegal practice in an authoritarian power structure. The books considers the institutional reasons that motivate doctors to take, patients to give, and the government to "tolerate" red packets, arguing that the bureaucratization of the medical profession, society of acquaintances and shortage of quality of medical services jointly create an institutional setting that has given rise to these informal payments. Contributing to a rounded understanding of the problems of healthcare reform in China, this book is a key read for all scholars interested in the issue of informal payments and healthcare politics in transition economies.


The Chinese State's Retreat from Health

The Chinese State's Retreat from Health

Author: Jane Duckett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-08-21

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 113689358X

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Over the post-Mao period, the Chinese state has radically cut back its role in funding health services and insuring its citizens against the costs of ill health. Using an analytical framework drawn from studies of state retrenchment in industrialized democracies and in post-communist Eastern Europe, Jane Duckett argues that the state’s retreat from health in China was not a simple consequence of economic policies and market reform. Just as important were the influences of health policies, reform era political institutions, communist party ideology, and bureaucratic stakeholders. Through her analysis, Duckett maintains that by studying retrenchment in China, the world’s most populous nation and now a major global economic power, we can better understand international transformations in the role of the state, and the politics that shape that role. The Chinese State’s Retreat from Health both extends research on retrenchment politics to a major authoritarian state and contributes to piecing together understanding of the Chinese state’s changing role across the economy and other social policies, including housing and education. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics, social policy and the Chinese health care system, as well as to those with a comparative interest in health, welfare states and the politics of retrenchment. Jane Duckett is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Politics at the University of Glasgow, UK.


Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition

Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition

Author: Douglas Besharov

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-05-17

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0199990336

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The story of China's spectacular economic growth is well known. Less well known is the country's equally dramatic, though not always equally successful, social policy transition. Between the mid- 1990s and mid-2000s---the focal period for this book---China's central government went a long way toward consolidating the social policy framework that had gradually emerged in piecemeal fashion during the initial phases of economic liberalization. Major policy decisions during the focal period included adopting a single national pension plan for urban areas, standardizing unemployment insurance, (re)establishing nationwide rural health care coverage, opening urban education systems to children of rural migrants, introducing trilingual education policies in ethnic minority regions, expanding college enrolment, addressing the challenge of HIV/AIDS more comprehensively, and equalizing social welfare spending across provinces, among others. Unresolved is the direction of policy in the face of longer-term industrial and demographic trends---and the possibility of a chronically weak global economy. Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition offers scholars, practitioners, students, and policymakers a foundation from which to explore those issues based on a composite snapshot of Chinese social policy at its point of greatest maturation prior to the 2007 global crisis.


China's Social Welfare

China's Social Welfare

Author: Joe C. B. Leung

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-04-21

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0745690475

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The extraordinary rise of China is one of the greatest global stories of recent times. However, China's development has been described as ‘uneven, uncoordinated, and unsustainable’, and has now reached a critical turning point. To transform itself into a successful high-income economy, China urgently needs to develop a new welfare regime. Social policy and social welfare programmes are pivotal not only to meet mounting social needs but also to promote social cohesion. This timely book explores key turning points in China’s trajectory, from the creation of a socialist egalitarian society promising a relatively stable livelihood at the expense of economic development, through the market-oriented reforms which have dismantled the traditional social protection system. The authors present the formidable social challenges ahead, including demographic shift, residential migration, and corrosive inequalities, and outline the emerging forms of social security protection in urban and rural areas, community-based social care services, non-governmental organizations and the social work profession. To redress inequalities and strengthen social cohesion, China needs to construct a robust developmental and redistributive strategy with shared responsibility between different levels of governments, as well as between civil society, the state and the market. This comprehensive and astute guide to one of China’s key current challenges will be welcomed by students and scholars of social policy, welfare, sociology and political science, and all interested in contemporary China.