China's new cooperative medical scheme's impact on the medical expenses of elderly rural migrants

Background: With rapid urbanization in China, the scale of elderly migrants from rural areas to urban cities has increased rapidly from 5.03 million in 2000 to 13.4 million people in 2015. Methods: Based on the unbalanced panel data obtained from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, this study investigates the impact of changes to the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on the medical expenditure of Chinese elderly rural migrants by using seemingly unrelated regression models. Results: NCMS coverage for elderly rural migrants rose from 11.83% in 2005 to 87.33% in 2014. The effective reimbursement rate increased significantly from 4.53% in 2005 to 36.44% in 2014, and out-of-pocket/income fell by 50% between 2005 and 2014. The NCMS significantly increased the effective reimbursement rate by 12.4% and out-of-pocket medical expenditure/income by 7.5% during this decade but played an insignificant role in reducing out-of-pocket payments. Conclusions: Policy makers need to promote a two-pronged strategy, which involves controlling the excessive growth of urban medical expenses and continuing to reform NCMS reimbursements for medical treatment, so non-urban resident elderly rural migrants can fully enjoy the welfare benefits of migration and urbanization.