China’s health-care predicament
Editor’s note: While the health care reform battle rages in Washington, D.C., China has been quietly revamping its own massive health care system — with decidely mixed results. In this three-part special report, Kathleen E. McLaughlin and photographer Sharron Lovell tracked the results on both urban and rural residents.
BEIJING — The price list at a top Beijing hospital explains a lot about what is wrong with China’s health care system: An appendectomy by a leading surgeon, available to any Chinese citizen, costs only $34.
This is not because the doctors or the equipment come cheap — Peking University People’s Hospital attracts the top medical talent in the country. It has the seventh highest-paid doctors in China and imports cutting edge technology from around the world. The low cost of surgery is not because the communist government makes up the funding gap between patient prices and the actual cost of care.
Instead, it is simply because the central government set a maximum hospital rate 20 years ago in an attempt to guarantee health care access to all citizens. It hasn’t allowed them to be raised since, despite China’s massive economic growth, increased personal income and rising inflation. In short, that $34 doesn’t cover much and the costs are made up in other ways.
Read the series at Global Post:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090728/rural-health-care
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090728/china-urban-health-care
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090804/china-health-care-reform
