Health‐seeking behavior and hospital choice in China's New Cooperative Medical System
利用25个县的家庭调查数据，通过嵌套Logit模型分析影响农村居民就医决策和医院选择的因素，发现年龄、食品支出占比、家庭其他病人数量会降低就医意愿，而残疾则增加就医意愿；报销方案和日均住院费用显著影响医院选择。
Since the dissolution of the Rural Cooperative Medical System at the end of the commune period, illness has emerged as a leading cause of poverty in rural China. To address the poor state of health care, the Chinese government unveiled the New Cooperative Medical System in 2002. Because local governments have been given significant control over program design, fundamental characteristics of the program vary from one county to the next. These differences may influence the decision to seek health care as well as the choice of hospital conditional on that initial decision. In this paper, we use a nested logit model to analyze household survey data from 25 counties to analyze the determinants of such health-seeking behavior. We find that age, the share of household expenditures allocated to food consumption (a measure of relative income), and the presence of other sick people in the household negatively affect the decision to seek health care while disability has a positive influence. Further, conditional on seeking treatment, the reimbursement scheme in place in each county and the average daily expenditure associated with hospitalization strongly influence hospital choice.