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Health Care in an Age of Transition: A Case Study of Shanghai, China

Dong, Weizhen. (2003). Health Care in an Age of Transition: A Case Study of Shanghai, China. Master's thesis / Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada).

Dong, Weizhen. (2003). Health Care in an Age of Transition: A Case Study of Shanghai, China. Master's thesis / Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada).

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This thesis is a study of health policy, as well as a study on social inequality. It studies who gets what in China's market transition, and how the state policy legitimised and institutionalised certain social inequalities. The thesis' findings parallel what the literature suggests for other transitional societies. Analysis of the new health care policy clearly shows the discontinuity in the state's commitment to equity, which is a common phenomenon in transitional Asia as well as in Eastern Europe. Through analyzing a specific state redistributive policy and its implementation in one Chinese city, this thesis explores the state's important role in shaping social stratification and inequality. This study examines the state policy's direct impact on inequality with respect to health care access in China. It is one of the first analyses of the social impact of the most recent health care financing system reform in urban China. This thesis claims that some unjust policies were implemented during the state-led economic reform in China, and these policies strongly affected social inequality. The health care policy is one of these policies. This policy determines who are and who are not protected by the state. The recent implementation of the Urban Employees' Basic Health Care Insurance System in Shanghai shows that the state redistributive policy has been creating or reinforcing social inequality, and that poor and near poor households suffer disproportionate financial burdens in health care. This study also shows that the vulnerable groups marginalized by other reform policies are also in a disadvantaged position in entitlement to health care insurance. This thesis suggests that there is an urgent need for both the Chinese government and the Chinese people to develop a better health care system that can provide everyone in society with reasonably equal access, easy access and quality service. Once a better health care system that addresses the Chinese social realities is established, China will win back its old glory in health care.




THES



Dong, Weizhen


Tepperman, Lorne

2003



NQ84858


236-236 p.




University of Toronto (Canada)

Ann Arbor

0612848582; 9780612848580




1957