How does the health care reform affect citizens’ access to health care in urban China?

Abstract: This thesis is centered on the issue of how does the health care system reform change urban citizens’ healthcare utilization in China. The new health care reform, against the background of building “a Harmonious Society”, aims to provide a universal health care for the whole population and makes citizens’ access to health care easier. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data, the study sets out to analyze strengths and flaws of the new health care system. The theoretical framework, consisting of East Asian Welfare Model and China’s welfare mix, is operationalized by analyzing the impacts of government’s new health policy and urban citizen’s perception on the health care reform. More specifically, health financing and health service provision have been explored. The findings show that the government has been expanding basic medic insurance coverage, improving medical institutions and increasing healthcare expenditure in order to achieve the objects of health care reform. Those efforts have brought some good effects on urban citizens’ healthcare utilization; however, the still high health care cost as well as other problems which haven’t been solved yet has brought negative impacts.