Although China’s government has promised that by 2010, basic medical and health care will cover all rural residents, if someone becomes seriously ill and can’t afford medical care, he or she is out of luck.
Under this proposed basic medical system, subscribers will be funded at a level of fifty yuan per person (twenty yuan from the central government, twenty from the local government and ten from the individual).
Chinese peasant
Rural health care in China has become a challenge. For many peasants in rural areas, this could mean as much as ten percent or more of their annual income would have to go toward basic health care insurance. The rural people do not have a choice. The government will force everyone to pay his or her share.
The focus in China is on prevention—meaning to plan your lifestyle around healthy habits. That’s why early in the morning you may find many older Chinese outside exercising using the graceful, poetic movements of Tai Chi to insure health and longevity.
How could obesity not be a problem since the Chinese are having a love affair with American fast food? China loves most things American. McDonalds and Domino’s Pizza are considered gourmet restaurants and can easily be found in China’s cities.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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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.
After the Communists won China in 1949, health care improved. Prior to that, life expectancy for the Chinese people was thirty-five years. By Mao’s death in 1976, average life expectancy had increased by twenty years.
There were three basic areas of medical care. Free substandard medical care was provided to the proletarian working class, meaning workers and peasants.
Mao started a program called ‘bare-foot doctors’. This program was the backbone of rural health care in China. This meant anyone could become a doctor.
Video: Documentary of Bare-Foot Doctors in China
Mao told the people that if you wanted to be a doctor, you didn’t need to go to medical school. All you had to do was have the motivation to provide medical care to needy people and the government would support you and provide limited training.
The second class of medical care went to people like teachers, clerks and secretaries, ‘friends’ of the working class, the proletariat. The only difference was that these ‘friends’ had to pay to get medical treatment. It was possible to face financial ruin from one hospital stay.
The third class were termed enemies of the proletariat like former shop-owners, landlords and denounced intellectuals like liberal arts professors. These people were denied treatment altogether.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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I’m weighing in on the health care debate. I’m an impartial observer, because I already have socialized medicine through the VA. Serving in Vietnamearned me that benefit, and the VA works betterthan most systems.
VA Medical Facility, San Francisco
We can learn from history if we pay attention. In 141 B.C.E., a new Han emperor sat on the Dragon Throne in China. His name was Wudi. He ruled for fifty-four years. Wudi believed that all people should have the right to buy certain commodities essential to survival and they should not be included in the free-market system. He implemented government monopolies in certain critical areas like salt, alcohol and iron. Prices were controlled so everyone paid the same low price.
After his death, a national debate known as the “Debate on Salt and Iron” took place. The government monopolies were abolished, and the poor could no longer afford many essentials. The rich grew wealthier. Soon after that, the Han Dynasty entered a period of stagnation like what is taking place in America today, and the Han Dynasty eventually collapsed.
What could we learn from what happened in China during the Han Dynasty?
Isn’t health care a commodity essential to survival?
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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