China’s Health Care Today

The health care system built under Mao’s leadership no longer exists. Doctors and nurses are trained the same as in the United States. Since Mao’s death, in one of the greatest policy reversals of modern times, China dissolved free medical care in its rural communities, privatized vast areas of the economy and shifted public-health resources toward the cities. Socialized medicine vanished.

President Ronald Reagan

President Ronald Reagan’s administration seems to have been the role model for these changes. During Reagan’s years, the U.S. saw a steep rise in the for-profit sector in medicine, in particular the for-profit hospital chains.

Other Republican presidents like the first George Bush continued this rush toward a for-profit, free market approach to health care. What has happened in the United States is starting to happen in China. There is no room for the poor and uninsured and uninsurable beyond what is considered basic services like blood pressure tests and taking your temperature along with a bit of advice.  

If you don’t have the money or a health plan linked to retirement, you face a death sentence. And like America, everyone working for the government (elected or not) has the best health care.

See China’s Health Under Mao

One Response to China’s Health Care Today

  1. […] More here: China's Health Care Today « iLook China […]

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