Does Medical Insurance Improve Household Consumption in China? — A Re-analysis Based on Meta Regression Analysis

In recent years, it has been a hot pot to explore the effectiveness of basic medical insurance. However, due to different sample characteristics, time series length, models and so on used by authors, there exists big difference among relevant papers. In this paper, we try to apply meta regression analysis (MRA, a prevalent statistic literature review method) to explore its influence on family expenditure, and 90 sample observations were extracted from 49 important literatures. We find: 1) All the index construction, sample characteristic, model selection, control factors will influence the conclusions of medical insurance effectiveness; 2) The implement of basic medical insurance will increase household consumption other than the new rural cooperative systems; 3) The implement of basic health insurance has not really reduce family’s medical expense. Thus, we induce that adverse selection exists in China’s medical insurance.