【Micro/Empirical Seminar】Addressing Health Inequality with Preventive Care: The Role of Cross-Price Incentives
2025/10/21
研討會日期 : 2025-10-21
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Steven Pai Xu (徐湃)
地點 : Conference Room B110
主持人 : Professor Bei Qin
演講者簡介 : Professor Steven Pai Xu received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of British Columbia in 2008. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests are Empirical Industrial Organization, Econometrics, and Applied Microeconomics.
演講摘要 : The growing burden of chronic diseases poses a serious challenge to global efforts to reduce poverty, promote health equity, and contain healthcare costs. This study investigates how patients, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, make tradeoffs between preventive and curative care when managing chronic conditions. Using detailed health insurance claims data from a rural county in China, we adopt a structural approach to uncover the mechanisms underlying healthcare utilization. Our findings reveal that disadvantaged individuals are generally less likely to seek preventive care unless it results in substantial cost savings. This reluctance can render well-intentioned anti-poverty health policies counterproductive. In particular, policies that primarily subsidize inpatient care lead to a 23% reduction in preventive care use among low-income patients, ultimately increasing total healthcare expenditures and reducing patient welfare by 46.2%. Counterfactual simulations suggest that lowering cost-sharing for outpatient services offers a more cost-effective and welfare-enhancing alternative to traditional subsidy schemes. These results underscore the importance of aligning financial incentives with preventive care to better support disadvantaged populations and improve long-term health outcomes.
