From Chinese Press

Medical treatment can be free

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-01 08:26

The government should provide free medical treatment to all Chinese, and it can afford to do so, says an article on southcn.com. Excerpts:

Medical bills have become a big burden for ordinary households, raising calls for the government to make healthcare free. Now an official in Guangdong has said the province can.

Liao Xinbo, the deputy director of Guangdong's health department, said recently that the province needed only 40 billion yuan to provide free medical care to all its residents, which obviously is a small amount for the rich province.

Adopting the same logic, a Central China Television official said that if the central government were to earmark another 400 billion yuan a year to the health sector, it would solve the healthcare problem across the country. The amount should not be a burden for a country like China.

The government should, therefore, start taking concrete steps to provide free medical treatment to all citizens, especially because the medical reform of the past few years has failed, resulting only in creating a dirty official-pharmacist-doctor-hospital nexus.

Compared with Brazil, another developing country, China has better infrastructure but a poorer social system. Airports, highways and buildings in Brazil cannot match those in China, but all Brazilians enjoy free medical treatment and education, the costs of which are two of the biggest burdens for most Chinese families.

(China Daily 06/01/2010 page9)