Cheng Li

Cheng is currently a PhD student at the Fourth Military Medical University (Xi’an, China), majoring in Social Medicine and Health Management.  He has been awarded a scholarship under the State Scholarship Fund to pursue his study at ANU as a joint PhD student for one year.  His research interest focuses on health care reform and health policy in China, particularly in the reform of the Chinese medical insurance system.  He has been participating in a research project on the reform of Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) system in China funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China.  As a member of the project and a visiting student at ACERH for 12 months from February 2010, his research mainly centres on the demand by urban residents on URBMI and the design of benefits packages using contingent valuation methods.  His research will provide useful insights for the reform of URBMI in China.

Xuan Yu

Xuan is currently a PhD student at the Fourth Military Medical University (Xi’an, China), majoring in Social Medicine and Health Management.  His research interest is applied health economics, particularly health care system reform and medicare formularies. Given the current interest in reforming the health system in China, the experience from other countries is well worth exploring. He believes Australia’s experience with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and with pharmcoeconomics will be very useful. As a visiting student at ACERH from Oct 2008 to Oct 2009, he will be undertaking a comparative analysis of health care systems between Australia and China, especially drug pricing and reimbursement mechanisms. He aims to complete a PhD thesis that will provide a feasible reference for the development of drug policy in China.

Jefferson Lin

Jefferson is currently a senior at Williams College (Massachusetts, USA) and will complete his Political Economy degree in June of this year.  During the summer of 2007, he completed a health policy internship with former United States Assistant Surgeon General Susan Blumenthal at the Center for the Study of the Presidency.  Jefferson is interested in public health policy issues, particularly relating to chronic disease and insurance coverage.  After graduation, he will pursue a joint degree in law and public health.  As a Visiting Scholar at ACERH in January 2008, he will work on a comparative analysis of the economics of diabetes policy in Australia and the United States.

Kaixin Zheng

Mr Kaixin Zheng is a Master of Science student at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, majoring in finance in the Faculty of Economics. He is visiting ACERH (ANU) for three months from July to September 2006 under the international internship program at Bocconi University. While doing his bachelor's degrees at Peking University, Mr Zheng developed an interest in health economics. As part of his economics degree, he wrote a dissertation on an econometric analysis of inpatient healthcare expenditure in polyclinics, while for his degree in medicine majoring in public health he wrote a dissertation analysing the feasibility of using case mix measures based on Australia Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AN-DRGs) in three hospitals in Beijing. Mr Zheng is pursuing his interest in hospital finance as part of his graduate studies at Bocconi University. During his visit to ACERH (ANU), he is writing a report on recent developments in DRGs in Australia, including their use in hospital performance appraisal and payment schemes in each State.