I read the most amazing article in the WSJ this morning it's about the public health care system in China. It's called, "In China, Preventative Medicine Pits Doctor Against System" by Andrew Browne.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116891144192977210.html?mod=hps_us_pageone
The article talks about how in Dr. Hsu, provides free medical advice on, "how to avoid high blood pressure," and he also dispenses cheaper medications (i.e. generic drugs vs. brand name options), which has made him an outcast among physicians and medical professionals in China. The bottom line as the article stated, Dr. Hsu is bad for business profits because encouraging prevention lowers the number of sick people needing medical attention and expensive drug prescriptions.
Health care in China is privatized, and the most startling statistic mentioned is that 2/3 of the 1.3 billion population have no health insurance and must pay up front for treatment, and if they cannot, the hospitals refuse treatment. The article mentions that those who have money have the opportunity to live, but those without money, "wait to die." Forty-three percent of hospital patients in 2003 discharged themselves early, against medical advice, and 2/3 of them because they had no more money, based on findings from the Chinese Health Ministry. In one instance a three or four year-old boy was rushed into a hospital suffering from the toxic effects of pesticide poisioning. Doctors told the man to get more cash before they would help the child, so he left to get the money and when he returned to the hospital it was too late, the child had already died. This incident angered some 2,000 people who mobbed the hospital.
In this country, the physician income is comparable to the average income, but phyisicans can make multiple times their salary as they order more numbers of expensive tests per patient: such as cat scans, pace makers and laser surgeries - the more ordered the more cash flow it added to their salaries.
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I think the last point you made is a really important one, the fact that the way our medical system is run in this country needs to be restructured. A doctor should not be able to profit from ordering unnesessary tests and labs that only drive up medical costs for the rest of the population. It may help businesses as well as the doctors to make more money, but in the end it only further increases the disparity between the rich and the poor when it comes to affording health care.
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