Originally published August 15 2005
Hospitals are to blame for China's poor health care system, health minister says
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
China's health minister blames the problems plaguing the country's health care system on for-profit hospitals charging outrageous fees for care.
China's Health Minister has accused greedy hospitals of being largely to blame for the sorry condition of the country's health care system.
Profit-seeking hospitals were charging exorbitant fees and prescribing unnecessary and expensive medications, the China Daily quoted Minister Gao Qiang as saying.
"Health institutions putting profit ahead of other functions not only adds burdens to patients, but seriously undermines the image of both medical personnel and public health departments," Gao said in an official report published Thursday.
Gao's statements followed the issue of a report last week by the World Bank and a department of China's State Council that called the country's efforts at reforming its medical system "basically unsuccessful", the newspaper said.
In the late 1970s, 94 percent of China's villages were covered by cooperative medical schemes.
As the collectives were disassembled during the market reforms of the 1980s, coverage rates fell to around 7 percent.
The government has tried a variety of stop-gap insurance experiments, but many have faltered or failed due to fragmented bureaucracy, spotty regulation and funding shortfalls.
Today China's medical care sector is composed of a confusing assortment of hospitals run by all levels of government, military and the private sector.
In many rural areas, badly under-staffed and under-supplied clinics offer the only health care.
Despite receiving fewer patients each year, Chinese hospitals' revenues jumped 70 percent between 2000 and 2003, the China Daily said.
"The next step of medical reform will focus more on the public interest and affordability of medical services for all," the paper quoted Gao as saying.
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