Analysis of the Operational Efficiency of Basic Medical Insurance for Urban and Rural Residents: Based on a Three-Stage DEA Model

Following the integration of the urban residents’ medical insurance into the new rural cooperative medical insurance in 2016, China has now formed a basic medical insurance system with the urban workers’ basic medical insurance system and the rural residents’ basic medical insurance system as the main entities. With the development of basic medical insurance, the protection for residents is becoming more and more comprehensive, and its fund expenditure also increases, so it is necessary to research the efficiency of the medical insurance fund expenditure. This paper conducts a three-stage DEA analysis of the efficiency of basic health insurance for urban and rural residents in 31 provinces, based on a Chinese panel data from 2017 to 2020. It is found that China’s health insurance operation is still in the development stage, with four regions in the efficiency frontier and Guizhou province having the lowest efficiency value nationwide. The GDP and fiscal investment on social security effectively reduce the input redundancy in the basic health insurance operation, which contributes to the efficiency of the health insurance operation. This study further proposes suggestions and countermeasures to improve the operational efficiency of China’s basic health insurance, based on the empirical results: (1) develop the economy and broaden the financing sources; (2) improve the level of health care services and improve the efficiency driven by quality; and (3) improve the level of health insurance supervision through multiple measures.