“Healthcare for all” has become a buzz phrase in the United States. It is an idealistic goal for a growing number of Americans, but in communist China, where the government claims it is the norm, “healthcare for all” is a mirage: a miserable failure.
I grew up in China, where the Communist Party rules the country. In my childhood, I constantly heard adults say “go see a doctor – free,” but the reality was that patients had to stand in line for hours on end waiting to see a regular doctor, stand in line for days waiting for a specialist, and stand in line for months waiting for a good surgeon to save their lives.
In the 1980s, the Chinese government started reforming its healthcare system. The saying “go see a doctor – free” was replaced by another: “healthcare for all – when you have a severe disease, the government pays.” With “healthcare for all,” the situation of waiting for days and months to see a specialist has not changed; to add insult to injury, patients must pay a large amount of money to see a specialist.
The recent coronavirus crisis is a prime example of how “healthcare for all” functions in China. While the Chinese government has imposed stricter censorship on news and social media since the outburst of the epidemic, information about the devastating situation in China has been leaked out through Twitter and other social media every day. Although it is hard to verify the sources, I believe most of the stories are true.
According to some twitters posted by Chinese inside China, the patients who were quarantined in Wuhan had to pay about 150 yuan (US$21.55) a day for three meals. In another Chinese tweet, a local Chinese official reported “accidentally” that about 400,000 Wuhan residents with severe chronical diseases could not find a drugstore to purchase their routine drugs.
While the Chinese law establishes that the government pay for treatment during large epidemics, many people died at home in Wuhan and Hubei province. They either were rejected by hospitals because lack of medical facilities or chose to stay home because they could not afford the treatment. Tragedies happened every day at the outset of the coronavirus outbreak – a 6-year-old boy stayed home alone with the dead body of his grandpa for several days before the social workers found them.
In China, not only are medical facilities crowded with patients. Doctors who risk their lives to work in hospitals are treated unfairly by the government.
- Zhong Jinxing, 32 years old, a doctor in Guangxi died from ‘overwork’ after 33 consecutive days working o on virus ‘control and prevention.’ When he failed to show up, a coworker found him dead in his dorm.
- Doctor Jiang Xueqing (55 years old), a winner of China’s top medical worker award, passed away recently in Wuhan after being infected with COVID-19 while fighting the epidemic on the frontlines.
The Chinese government promised to pay double salaries for doctors fighting the epidemic, but a leaked internal official document shows that the government has no plan to allocate funds for this promise. At the same time, the doctors who first found the coronavirus and informed people online were accused of spreading rumors and arrested. The doctors who published an online article on the Lancet Global Health – Chinese medical staff request international medical assistance in fighting against COVID-19 – were punished and ordered to make a retraction.
“Healthcare for all” in communist China is a lie. Unfortunately, some American politicians enthusiastically embrace this fallacy, and millions of Americans seem to believe the false panacea. The recent crisis in China revealed that “healthcare for all” actually leaves no care for the people who truly need medical help.
Those of us who know this hard reality firsthand should speak up and try to stop this lie from spreading. Dante Alighieri said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”