China estimate of the day

The paper’s title is “The Largest Insurance Expansion in History: Saving One Million Lives Per Year in China”:

The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) rolled out in China from 2003-2008 provided insurance to 800 million rural Chinese. We combine aggregate mortality data with individual survey data, and identify the impact of the NCMS from program rollout and heterogeneity across areas in their rural share. We find that there was a significant decline in aggregate mortality, with the program saving more than one million lives per year at its peak, and explaining 78% of the entire increase in life expectancy in China over this period. We confirm these mortality effects using micro-data on mortality, other health outcomes, and utilization.

It is striking how few Westerns have even heard of this policy, one of the more important global events in recent years.  I do however wish to ask if this estimate is in accord with other, more general estimates from the literature.  The Amish, for instance, don’t see doctors so often and their life expectancy seems to be perfectly fine.  The new paper is from Jonathan Gruber, Mengyun Li, and Junjian Yi.