Further efforts from the Chinese on healthcare

WORLD NEWS: "China Details Its Health-Care Revamp," by Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 8 April 2009.

Frankly, America sports a better socialist government than China's: we do pensions better, and we do medical better.

But sensing the growing danger of a restive rural population, and the need to free savings for spending, China increasingly works to deal with its massive deficit in health-care.

So an announcement of an initial phase effort ($120B) to construct--can you believe it--a medical clinic in every village and at least one hospital in every "county."

Now that's a construction surge.

All this speaks to the "political importance of rebuilding a social safety net that was largely dismantled during the country's shift to a market economy over the past 30 years."

This is one of the great hidden deficits of China, the other two biggies being the environment and the aging population.

Currently, China's spending on healthcare places it in 156th place out of 196 countries surveyed by the World Health Organization (less than 1% of GDP).

Marx would be appalled.

Comments

[Louis Heberlein]

China's formal ethical culture fits socialism. China's street culture has long favored cowboy capitalism with risk for high rolling gambles. But the street culture still has more mutual community support than we do ... except where we maintain people oriented ethnic islands which trump legal oriented rights.

One of the earlier concerns I heard was that rural Chinese workers that left their families and communities to seek better jobs in big cities would end up poorer without community support. I hope not.