Time：June8, 2022（Wed.）10:00-11:30, Beijing Time

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Speaker：Wanyu Yang, Assistant Professor in Health and Public Economics, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics

Abstracts：

Healthcare spending grows faster than the world economy. Yet many healthcare systems lack effective healthcare cost control. We study a pilot insurance program in China that promoted primary care use through lowering cost sharing for outpatient drug spending for hypertension and diabetes—top two chronic diseases in China. Utilizing a unique administrative medical dataset and a difference-in-differences method, we find that the program-eligible patients had significantly increased the use of outpatient care and experienced reduced probability of hospitalization. Information and salience of the program can explain half of program's total impact on healthcare use and expenditure. Overall, a lower cost sharing for primary care achieved better disease management and a substantial net saving of total healthcare expenditure.