Society
Poor patients gambling with their lives
By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-16 06:56
 |
Large Medium Small |
Not all owners of the clinics are "quacks", however. A recent inspection in Henan found that some back-street doctors are qualified and provide cheap, quality services to residents, said Liu Zhaolong, head for the provincial health supervision bureau.
The government needs to moderately relax the threshold for access to the medical services market, he said, as well as launch programs to encourage more qualified medical staff and college graduates to work in county- and village-level health centers.
Demand for illegal clinics among poorer sections of society is also intensified by both the lack of social insurance coverage and the exorbitant fees charged by large hospitals, said Chen Wen, a professor in public health from Shanghai Fudan University.
"People with adequate medical insurance can go to hospital but those without must either simply endure minor illnesses or go to smaller, cheaper - and possibly illegal - clinics," he said.
More than half of the rural population of China does not have adequate medical insurance, say analysts, who argue that closing the gap between urban and rural residents is one of the biggest challenges facing a country in the process of fast urbanization and industrialization.
It is not uncommon to hear stories of how a rural family went bankrupt after one of them caught a serious disease, said Chen. "Although the government is promoting a rural cooperative medical insurance system throughout the countryside, a vacuum is being left for these migrant workers in the city."
Under the rural cooperative scheme, people can only seek reimbursement for medical fees incurred in the region they are from, not the place they live.
"We need to improve the plan so that people do not need to take the risk for a cheaper choice," said Chen.
(China Daily 03/16/2010 page1)
