改革开放以来,我国城镇职工医疗保障制度改革陆续在全国各地展开,并且取得了一些重要进展。与此同时,与医疗保险这个世界性难题相关的深层次矛盾也开始逐步显现出来,需要我们从医疗消费的特性入手,认真探索适合中国国情的医疗保险制度。 一、医疗消费的特殊属性 医疗保险的对象是医疗消费。要建立一种相对适宜的医疗保险制度,必须从医疗消费的特性入手进行研究。事实证明,医疗消费是一种特殊消费,它较其他一些保险消费如养老消费具有许多显著特点。 首先,医疗消费的需求弹性大于以衣食为主要需求对象的养老保险消费。在国民收入渐次增长的条件下,以衣食为基本需求的养老保险消费在家庭总支出中的比重将趋于下降,衣食需求尤其是食物需求的收入弹性很小,在数量上甚至具有某 Since the reform and opening up, the reform of medical insurance system for urban workers in our country has been carried out one after another throughout the country and some important progress has been made. At the same time, the deep-seated contradictions related to the world-wide medical insurance are beginning to emerge gradually. It is necessary for us to start with the characteristics of medical consumption and conscientiously explore the medical insurance system that suits China’s national conditions. First, the special attributes of medical spending Medical insurance is the object of medical spending. To establish a relatively suitable medical insurance system, we must start from the characteristics of medical consumption to carry out research. Facts have proved that medical spending is a special consumption, which has many salient features over other consumer insurance such as pension spending. First of all, the demand elasticity of medical consumption is greater than that of the pension insurance which is the main demand for food and clothing. With the gradual increase of national income, the proportion of endowment insurance based on basic food and clothing in the total household expenditure will tend to decrease. The income elasticity of demand for food and clothing, especially for food, is very small,