Abstract
Background: In China, rapid urbanization has caused migration from rural to urban areas, and raised the prevalence of hypertension. However, public health insurance is not portable from one place to another, and migration may limit the effectiveness of this non-portable health insurance on healthcare. Our study aims to investigate whether migration limits the effectiveness of health insurance on hypertension management in China. Methods: Data were obtained from the national baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study in 2011, including 4926 hypertensive respondents with public health insurance. Outcome measures included use of primary care, hypertension awareness, medication use, blood pressure monitoring, physician advice, and blood pressure control. Multivariate logistic regressions were estimated to examine whether the effects of rural health insurance on hypertension management differed between those who migrated to urban areas and those who did not migrate and lived in rural areas. Results: Among hypertensive respondents, 60.7% were aware of their hypertensive status. Compared to rural residents, the non-portable feature of rural health insurance significantly reduced rural-to-urban migrants’ probabilities of using primary care by 7.8 percentage points, hypertension awareness by 8.8 percentage points, and receiving physician advice by 18.3 percentage points. Conclusions: In China, migration to urban areas limited the effectiveness of rural health insurance on hypertension management due to its non-portable nature. It is critical to improve the portability of rural health insurance, and to extend urban health insurance and primary care coverage to rural-to-urban migrants to achieve better chronic disease management.
Highlights
Since the mid-1980s, China has experienced the most rapid urbanization and internal migration in human history [1]
We found that rural-to-urban migration limited the benefits of rural health insurance, public health insurance can promote better management of hypertension [27]
In order to improve hypertension management for these migrants, it is critical to improve the portability of rural health insurance and extend urban health insurance to cover rural-to-urban migrants in the short term, and further integrate rural and urban health insurance programs as a long-term solution [28]
Summary
Since the mid-1980s, China has experienced the most rapid urbanization and internal migration in human history [1]. Public health insurance is not portable from one place to another, and migration may limit the effectiveness of this non-portable health insurance on healthcare. Our study aims to investigate whether migration limits the effectiveness of health insurance on hypertension management in China. The non-portable feature of rural health insurance significantly reduced rural-to-urban migrants’ probabilities of using primary care by 7.8 percentage points, hypertension awareness by 8.8 percentage points, and receiving physician advice by 18.3 percentage points. Conclusions: In China, migration to urban areas limited the effectiveness of rural health insurance on hypertension management due to its non-portable nature. It is critical to improve the portability of rural health insurance, and to extend urban health insurance and primary care coverage to rural-to-urban migrants to achieve better chronic disease management
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