Challenges in Health and Welfare Reform
As the state sector retreated from the provision of social services in China new systems for the implementation of health and welfare services emerged.
These dramatic changes included the emergence of private health insurance and the drive for profitability by hospitals and clinics.
Employees in the health and welfare sectors changed their relationships with the government and their patients and clients.
Amidst these reforms, China has faced the major global epidemics of SARS, Bird Flu and HIV-AIDS.
Researchers in this area of the Centre's activities aim to promote knowledge of how the reforms to health and welfare affect Chinese across myriad localities within China itself and internationally.
Current projects being undertaken by researchers in the China Research Centre in this area include:
The powerfulness of the powerless: ethics and Chinese doctors in a socialist market economy
Researcher: Dr. Jingqing Yang
The aim of this project is four-fold. First, it will investigate the ethical and trust crisis that Chinese doctors are facing as a result of economic and medical reforms, and examine the institutional reasons behind these conducts from the perspective of the sociology of professions. Second, investigation will be conducted on whether doctor's almost unconstrained professional power at the clinical level can be brought under control by the current policies that Chinese government adopts. Third, since most doctors are still employed in the state-run work-unit system, the project will probe to what extent a health work-unit represents the state and the public interests and to what extent it represents doctor's and the whole work-unit's interests, and how doctors interact with the state and the public through work-unit system, and how a work-unit supervises the technical and ethical performance of its doctors. Fourth, apparently Chinese doctors have not formed a bargaining group to represent their interest; therefore, how they protect their interest when the state (including the work-unit system) fails them constitutes another area which this project will explore.
This project is funded by UTS Early Career Researcher Grant scheme.
China’s Local Health Provision in a Mixed Economy
Researcher: Dr. Beatriz Carrillo Garcia
Over the last two decades the Chinese government has been re-assessing the role of public intervention in the realms of social security and welfare. Meanwhile, a growing demand for health care services – due to population ageing, epidemiological transition, growing pollution-related disease, changing lifestyles, and the increase of food-borne disease – continues to be unmet by public medical institutions. This has resulted in the rapid emergence of private medical providers. This research project will look at the ensuing changes in the provision of health services, particularly at the role of private involvement and public-private links, to examine whether or not more effective systems of health care provision are being formed.
