Abstract: In-depth research on the impact of "emphasizing medical care over public health" on residents' health levels is of great practical significance for optimizing structure of government health spending, enhancing the overall efficiency of the medical and health system, and promoting the construction of the Healthy China strategy. From the perspective of research, unlike the existing literature that focuses on the total amount of government health spending, this research focuses on the structure of government. Based on China's provincial panel data from 2013 to 2019, a two-way fixed effect model is used to examine the of "emphasizing medical care over public health" on residents' health levels. The results show that "emphasizing medical care over public health" has significantly reduced the health level of residents, and this conclusion still holds alleviating endogeneity using system GMM regression and conducting robustness tests using Tobit generalized linear regression model. The impact of "emphasizing medical care over public health" on residents' health levels has regional heterogeneity, which has already become prominent in eastern central regions, but has not yet appeared in western regions.

Key words: Healthy China, public health, government health expenditure, resource allocation imbalance, residents' health level