Trying to find information about China's health care system
(without a VPN, at least), is confirmation of how much media the Communists
control over here. I had several issues
accessing a South China Morning Post
article online entitled "Patient ratio too high, say doctors". After five tries, all I'd managed to see was
that Hong Kong has one of the highest doctor-patient ratios in the developed
world. Then the site would boot me off.
I did find a website (www.gulfmed.com) that stated these
doctor-patient ratios:
1: 950 China
1: 390 U.S.
1: 170 Cuba
Yes, Cuba--that home of the Bay of Pigs and Castro--has the
lowest doctor-patient ratio in the world, according to
socialmedicine.org and bigthink.org.
If you've seen Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko",
you already know about Cuba, so I won't go into details.
And according to asianresearch.org and the World Health
Organization (WHO), China ranks lower than Iraq for medical care.
I had a small class of four students the other day, one of
whom is a doctor. When the doctor said
he sees 200 patients a day, I guffawed.
Surely he was joking. But his
normally jolly face was serious, and the other three students confirmed
it. There are a handful of articles
online that confirm 100-200 patients per day being the norm in China. When I told my mother this, she did some
quick calculations. "That's like 2
or 3 minutes per patient." And we
complain in the U.S. if we see the doc for 15!
Of course, I still think 15 isn't enough time, especially if you have
some serious issue(s) to discuss, but after speaking to my students, 15 minutes
seems positively luxurious.
A friend of mine who recently had knee surgery here
confirmed this also. Her first diagnosis
came from a harried Chinese doctor who told her in under five minutes that she would
need surgery--with just a glance at her x-ray and a tap or two of her
knee. When friends urged her to get a
second opinion, she did--at the expensive foreigner hospital, paying triple the
price. Interestingly, the diagnosis was
the same: "You need surgery"--but
the doctor--a Chinese woman--took about 10 minutes with a model knee to show my
friend exactly what the issue was. Eight
extra minutes for peace of mind, but you must pay triple for those 8
minutes. That's how serious--and
expensive--the situation is here. My
friend teaches at an international school, and had purchased her own private
medical insurance to cover the surgery.
Next month our healthcare over here is changing. Rather than one option, EF English First (the
company I work for) is now offering three:
a low-priced, a mid-priced, and a premium. One of my co-workers, an American with
stomach issues, has already chosen the premium.
With the regular low-priced insurance, it had taken him weeks to
straighten out a claim the last time he went to a doctor--sometimes relying on
our Chinese co-workers in the office to interpret over the phone. Because his stomach problems are chronic,
this man isn't taking any chances.
I'm debating: it's a
draw between the mid-priced and the premium for me. On the one hand, I've only been to the doctor
once in the 18 months I've been here, at the expensive foreigner hospital. Then, when I had the flu last winter, my boss
at the time generously allowed me to stay home and rest until I was well. My current boss has different policies. That is to say, he has no bedside manner and
no sympathy. A co-worker, recently
diagnosed with Celiac disease, was told by our current boss that she had to
stay at work when she was painfully ill.
When he wasn't looking, another co-worker sent her home and took over
her class.
The Celiac co-worker has a friend who was recently involved
in an accident. She was sandwiched
between a taxi and a scooter. Foreign
employees of EF currently have emergency insurance for just this kind of
thing.
Due to the Chinese system, however, this poor woman was
required to straighten everything out with the police and the insurance
companies BEFORE she received surgery to fix her broken arm--two and a half
weeks later. AND no pain meds,
either. Knowing China, and knowing my
tolerance for crap like this, my response would've been "Who do I have to
bribe around here to get some morphine?
Huh?" In China, bribery
often works. No matter how often people
say it's against the law, the majority of people do it, and few people get
caught. I could see myself saying,
"Come on, I'll give you 100 RMB for a Tylenol, just give me something!" Now that I'm counting down the last six
months of my contract, I could just see myself having some kind of accident if
I choose the low-price insurance.
My friend with the knee surgery and the young woman who'd
been in the accident are both foreigners, with medical insurance. I'm not sure what the insurance situation is
for Joe Q. Shanghai Resident, but I'm guessing it's worse--a lot worse. Without the status of being a foreigner, and
without the money that often comes with it, the average Chinese person probably
waits hours to see a doctor, who makes a one-minute diagnosis before sending
him or her on their way.
I know the healthcare scenario in my own country is kind of
a mess these days, but it seems like heaven in comparison.
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