THE PAINFUL HEALTH OF THE NATION

liangzai

I appreciate your honest critique of the politics. This is fresh in China!

A national basic health insurance is very important. It doesn't have to be as elaborate as in Europe, it could be done in steps. Take 10% yearly of the military budget, which is over-sized, and the situation is drastically improved.

iluv2fish

Tthat $45,000,000 is spoken for. This number will get bigger and bigger.

No healthcare for you!

mengzhi

" The shameful health of a nation " by swwind is a good and valid criticism of a nation's shortcoming in the health care system. It is the totally exaggerated, over-the-top, bloated, unduelly magnified and hysterical blown up conclusion which has deprived itself of its somber and serious implications. Health care can always be better ; this is true all over the world, including the richest and most advanced countries who have been tinkering with one system or another for centuries. To extrapolate one case of a kidney stone to the impending collapse of a nation's health is by all measures more a reflection of the author ( swwind ) than the issue. As is revealed, huge ( 9 fold ) increase in budget is being offered and along with it plenty of improvement.  This positive and optimistic move is immediately seized upon by the same author as being just so much more for the pockets of the corrupt officials, blah blah and blah.

I think that swwind should take stock of his own mental frame of mind. This unfriendly, uncouth and uncalled for unadulterated bad-mouthing of China inspite of everything is juvenile and uneducated behaviour. I am now using some harsh words, reluctantly and in response to the unmitigated and silly diatribe which unfortunately is the stock and trade of a few ( only a few ) of the forumites.

We are more than willing to accept valid criticism. We are not so comfortable with savage illogical blabber when the aim of a topic is purely designed to irritate and annoy. Good cheer to swwind.

iluv2fish

Meng...perhaps you can now understand how you sound to us.

Ok, Everyone in the world is struggling with health care but......from what I understand everyone was
covered in China 20 years ago. Am I right there?

Good news -
"More than half of urban residents, by comparison, enjoy some kind of coverage, which is supplied by their employers."
"In the last several years China has experimented with reforms aimed at improving health care for
peasants. The most important is an insurance plan in which participating farmers must make an annual payment of a little more than a dollar to gain eligibility for basic medical treatments."
"The government, which under President Hu  has made rural living standards a top priority, has recently announced an expansion of this experiment, with increased fees and increased coverage."


Bad news-
"Many peasants have complained that even the dollar payment is too big a burden and that in any event
the coverage the plan theoretically provides is inadequate. "
"As a result, according to the government's own estimates, in less than a generation a rural population
that once enjoyed universal, if rudimentary, coverage is now 79 percent uninsured."
""There's basically no safety net at all for medical care in the village I live in," said Yang Yunbiao, a worker
with a Chinese independent organization in Fuyang that aids poor sick people. "Our village has a lot of
aged people with disease who are unable to get treatment, just staying at home in bed with barely enough to eat. They are shut in and can't work, and their disease and poverty have taken away their dignity."

That that is balanced Meng...learn from it.

[ Last edited by iluv2fish at 2006-3-6 06:41 AM ]

tongluren

It is the exaggeration of the Jia Yang Gui Zhi that is truly shameful.  According to them, nothing that  is done in China can hold a candle to that in the West.

If indeed China's medical system is so terrible, you'd still see mortality rate like that in the "biggest  democracy in the world."

Let's compare.  According to the CIA World Facts,:

United States - where medicine is supposedly "decades more advanced" than in China, and according to Jia Yang Gui Zhi, the paradise on earth:

Infant mortality rate:
total: 6.5 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 7.17 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.8 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 77.71 years
male: 74.89 years
female: 80.67 years (2005 est.)

Total fertility rate:
2.08 children born/woman (2005 est.)

HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:
0.6% (2003 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:
950,000 (2003 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:
14,000 (2003 est.)
________________________

CHINA

Infant mortality rate:
total: 24.18 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 21.21 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 27.5 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 72.27 years
male: 70.65 years
female: 74.09 years (2005 est.)

Total fertility rate:
1.72 children born/woman (2005 est.)

HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:
0.1% (2003 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:
840,000 (2003 est.) - [actually this was recently adjusted down to less than 650,000 by 2006)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:
44,000 (2003 est.)
_____________________________

Let's look at countries with similar population as China, and a little less well run:

India:

Infant mortality rate:
total: 56.29 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 56.86 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 55.69 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 64.35 years
male: 63.57 years
female: 65.16 years (2005 est.)

Total fertility rate:
2.78 children born/woman (2005 est.)

HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:
0.9% (2001 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:
5.1 million (2001 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:
310,000 (2001 est.)

Major infectious diseases:
        Definition Field Listing
degree of risk: high
food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever
vectorborne diseases: dengue fever, malaria, and Japanese encephalitis are high risks in some locations
animal contact disease: rabies (2004)
___________________________________

What is the point of all this?  Well, China is not yet paradise, obviously.  But  the capable government is doing wonders with what limited resources to take care of the folks, - yes, even the poor folks.  The results are all in the numbers.  

China leads the world in the control and prevention of infectitous dicseases.  Cancer rates are MUCH lower than that in the United States.  Cigarette smoking is a shame, but  it takes time to work on it.  But if you examine the efforts and results of the most recent  epidemic "crises" (SARS and Avian Flu), despite illwishers predicting cataclysmic disasaters, like hundreds of millions of Chinese dying horrible deaths, China's effective medical systems held both of these crises at bay, and proudly so.  Less than 200 died from SARS - more than 50 times that die from the common flu in the United States a year, more than 5 times that die in America of Blue Nile disease each year, even though America has only 1/5th the population.

What is the most telling?  Look at the difference in the  AIDS rate -  0.05% vs. America's 0.6%, a 1,200 percent difference.  Where is the superiority?  How is that "decades ahead of China" bragging manifested in real life?  

We Chinese are very proud of the accomplishment of the hard working, smart working Chinese medical folks.  Yes, there can be improvements.  But  don't exaggerate the rare extreme cases to bash the great nation.

iluv2fish

.....and don't slam the west when thee is much to do in your own backyard. Deal?:)

tongluren

Sine when did the Chinese "slam the west"?  

Did we volunteer, like via Voice of China to be broadcast from next to Gitmo into the lower 20,  that America should really do somthing about violating the basic human rights of not only those locked up in Gitmo, but also the other 2 million rotting in America's infamous growth sector, the Correctional Industry?  Do we file complaints with the UN Human Rights Council about how this dead end 3rd class convict population, with a gross overrepresentation of ethnic minorities, with a recidivism rate of over 90%, has no hope of rejoining society?  

Do we point out the obvious on a daily  basis that America's mistakening irresponsiblity for freedom allows the delivery of all form of destructive porn to be piped directly to 70 million cable families:  MF, MMF, MMMMMMMMMFF, MM, MMMMMMMM, s&m, bestiality, rape, snuff, child pornography,  resulting in an entire society accepting the stereotype that women are objects, to be used, and as a result  more than half of women folks is the victim of unconsented sex?  

Do we tell your pols in their faces that we find  the way that they come to power, through periodic liars' contests, really curious?  Do we ask tthe frank questions and demand that they explain why they lie every chance they have, at least when it comes election time (campaign promises being the biggest oxymorons in the 20th century, and continue today)?

No, how you wanna screw up your society is your previlege.