China's New Public Health Insurance

The New Rural Co-operative Medical System (NRCMS) constitutes the main system of public health insurance in China today. This book outlines the nature of the system, traces the processes of its enactment and implementation, and discusses its strengths and weaknesses. It argues that the contested nature of the fields of health policy and social security has long been overlooked, and reinterprets the NRCMS as a compromise between opposing political interests. Furthermore, it argues that structural institutional misfits facilitate fiscal imbalances and a culture of non-compliance in local health policy, which distort the outcomes of the implementation and limit the effectiveness of insurance.

Armin Müller is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georg-August-University in Göttingen, Germany.

- Introduction - Systemic Interdependence and Institutional Change in the Health System of Post-Mao China - Contested Policy: The Two Attempts to Rebuild the CMS - The Enactment and Implementation of the NRCMS System - Designing the NRCMS in a Local Context - Operating the NRCMS in a Context of Misfit Institutions - Health Insurance and the New Health Reform - Conclusion