A Chinese friend surprisingly told me she hates Chinese doctors (surprisingly, because I thought she was going to get all defensive during our conversation about health care systems around the world): they are impatient, talk down to patients, do not treat patients as customers, and charge additional money to tell the patient the diagnosis, after they’ve poked and prodded the victim. And then, of course, there’s the medicines, which doctors (in China and the West) are notorious for prescribing so they can get the commissions to supplement their salaries.

In 2006 a single average hospital admission at a state hospital cost 12, 650 yuan (US$1846 in 2009), nearly 90% of the average Chinese family’s wealth. Nearly half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion had no insurance coverage at all. China ranks among the lowest of industrialized countries in terms of public financing of health care, with an individual responsible for paying more than half their salary for hospital care, and the government picking up less than twenty percent of the tab; company-based social insurance benefits contributed nearly the remainder of the bill. Ninety percent of China’s 18,000 hospitals are state-run, with prescription drugs bringing in about half their income, all of the expense of which is picked up by the hapless patient. Healthc are costs have exploded. Despite a GDP per capita increasing nearly 30-fold, total health expenditures per capita increased 40-times. Out-of-pocket spending on health care,though, exploded more than a hundred-fold!

Makes you want to eat that apple a day.

ChinaSmack has a couple of insightful posts that present just what a challenge it is for Chinese citizens to get proper, affordable medical care: Chinese Hospital Rushed by Patients; Waiting All Night Outside a Hospital to See a Doctor

Reference: “Taking care: China’s health reform and policy dynamics,” by Gordon G. Liu, BusinessForum China, Nov-Dec 2008.