Health insurance and hospitalisation in urban China: bending to the wind of change.

The transformation from a planned economy to a market-oriented one in China has had profound impact on access to health care for a vast majority of the Chinese population. This article used the data from the national household health surveys conducted in 1993 and 1998 to show that the coverage of health insurance declined significantly from 54% to 39% among the urban population over the period, while rate of hospital admission came down from 45 inpatients per 1,000 people in 1992 to 30 inpatients per 1,000 people in 1997. It concludes that the declined coverage of health insurance and the rapid rise of medical care costs were the major factors affecting the access of the Chinese population to hospital care services.