Venue Changed to the Philippines Conference Room

China has recently reformed its health care system with the intent of providing universal coverage for basic health care to every Chinese citizen. Three separate health insurance plans have recently been launched to achieve this objective: the rural newly cooperative medical scheme, urban resident health insurance, and urban employee-based health insurance. Each plan differs substantially in terms of insurers, insured population, premiums, and benefits packages. Using data from the 2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey, Hai Fang will discuss a study that investigates whether and to what extend different health insurance plans have created disparities in health care utilization and expenditure.

Hai Fang is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management, and Policy at the University of Colorado Denver, and a research associate in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He earned his doctorate in economics and master of public health from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2006. Before joining the University of Colorado Denver, he taught at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Miami. His research interests include health economics, labor economics, and public health.

This colloquium will discuss the state of evidence, challenges, and research agenda regarding the growth of private hospitals and public-private hospital partnerships in developing Asia.

Dominic Montagu is an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and lead of the Health Systems Initiative at the Global Health Group of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). His work is focused on private delivery of health services in developing countries and on market function for health services and health commodities. He has active field research projects ongoing in Nigeria and Myanmar. Montagu holds masters degrees in business administration and public health, as well as a doctorate in public health, from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). He has worked extensively in Africa and Asia, and teaches on the private sector in developing countries, and on the regulation of private hospitals and public-private-partnerships at UCSF, UC Berkeley, and on behalf of the World Bank Institute.

FSI's second major conference on global underdevelopment brought together worldwide thought leaders to explore the root causes of global underdevelopment and to provide fresh insights on the links between international security and universal access to adequate food, health care and water.

Redefining Security Along the Food/Health Nexus Conference website

**Due to space restrictions, this event has reached capacity and we will no longer be taking RSVPs. Everyone is still welcome to attend but please plan to arrive early as seating is on a first come, first serve basis.**

Under the Hu-Wen leadership, China announced a shift in its development policy from a policy program that mainly emphasizes economic growth to one that pursues a “harmonious society.” The harmonious society program was a response to rapid increases in inequality during the 1990s, and its aim has been to ensure that the benefits from growth are widely shared.    

In recent years have the benefits from growth been widely shared? Has income inequality increased or decreased during the Hu-Wen era?

Drawing on recent findings from the China Household Income Project, a collaborative survey research project monitoring changes in incomes and inequality, Professor Terry Sicular will discuss recent trends in inequality and poverty in China. 

Terry Sicular is professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario. She received her doctorate at Yale and has taught at Stanford and Harvard. She is a specialist on the Chinese economy, speaks Mandarin, and has been studying and travelling to China for more than 30 years. Her recent research examines incomes and inequality in China, as well as related topics such as educational attainment and its intergenerational transmission, and the impact of housing reforms on household income and wealth. She has published widely in scholarly journals and books, and is as a contributor to and co-editor of Inequality and Public Policy, published by Cambridge University Press (2008). She has served as a consultant to international donor organizations, and is a leader in the ongoing, China Household Income Project, a collaborative research project that conducts a nationwide household survey and monitors trends in China’s incomes and inequality.

This event is part of the China's Looming Challenges series. 

The global health community has been aiming at ensuring health coverage for all. To achieve universal health care coverage, the German Social Health Insurance model is one solution. However, one major disadvantage of Social Health Insurance is the fragmented insurance plans, exemplified by 3,500 insurance plans in Japan’s public universal health insurance system. To improve the financial sustainability of Japan’s public universal health insurance, policy options include consolidating fragmented plans as already implemented in Germany and South Korea.

This presentation has two major goals. One is to evaluate the optimal health insurance size in consolidating 3,500 insurance plans in Japan through a simulation analysis using the best available micro data in Japan. The other goal is to discuss the global policy implications based on the experiences of Japan's public universal health insurance.

Dr. Byung-Kwang Yoo is an associate professor in health policy in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Yoo’s unique career includes clinical medicine (MD) in Japan and research experience as a health services researcher/health economist in the United States. He obtained an MS in health policy and management from Harvard University, and a PhD in health policy and management (concentration on health economics) from Johns Hopkins University. Yoo used to work as a research associate at the Center for Health Policy at Stanford University, as a health economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and as an assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York State. He has published his work in leading journals such as Lancet, Health Economics, Health Services Research, the American Journal of Public Health, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The team of leaders who will take the helm in China beginning next year—the so-called “Fifth Generation”—will be better educated, have greater exposure to the outside world, and extensive experience implementing policies that have facilitated sustained economic growth and growing international influence. They may view issues somewhat differently than their predecessors but have risen to the top by going along to get ahead and are unlikely to propose radical policy initiatives.  But they must confront a growing number of challenges fueled by China’s past success and recent behavior and will be constrained by structural features of the Chinese system and integration into the global market.

Thomas Fingar is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). In 2009, he was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at FSI. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

This event is part of the China's Looming Challenges series.