in china, patients murder doctors instead of the other way around
generally, issues that can be solved by going to the ER in the US are much cheaper in china. it's when you get into more capital intensive illnesses that you become just as fucked as an american (if not more so). the systemic problem is that doctors are generally less motivated to provide quality service since their salaries are so incredibly low that they get more returns on being good paper pushers and taking bribes than being good doctors. increased rule of law (read: actual consequences) has the bribery on a steady downward trend.
the government has been unwilling to further subsidize doctor salaries (they've actually been on a downward trend for a while now), and the 'solution' in recent years has been to promote public/private partnerships in the various departments in order to indirectly offload the cost on to the consumer in the form of diagnostics and other consumable tech, of which the doctors can get a cut. this has created a situation in which quality coverage has become more concentrated in capital-dense areas and people only ever go to the big name hospitals for anything. the government's response to this has been to throw money at the smaller public clinics to entice people coming in with easy fixes away from the bigger hospitals so that the specialists there can do specialist things instead of spending 90% of their time treating stubbed toes.
in china, patients murder doctors instead of the other way around
generally, issues that can be solved by going to the ER in the US are much cheaper in china. it's when you get into more capital intensive illnesses that you become just as fucked as an american (if not more so). the systemic problem is that doctors are generally less motivated to provide quality service since their salaries are so incredibly low that they get more returns on being good paper pushers and taking bribes than being good doctors. increased rule of law (read: actual consequences) has the bribery on a steady downward trend.
the government has been unwilling to further subsidize doctor salaries (they've actually been on a downward trend for a while now), and the 'solution' in recent years has been to promote public/private partnerships in the various departments in order to indirectly offload the cost on to the consumer in the form of diagnostics and other consumable tech, of which the doctors can get a cut. this has created a situation in which quality coverage has become more concentrated in capital-dense areas and people only ever go to the big name hospitals for anything. the government's response to this has been to throw money at the smaller public clinics to entice people coming in with easy fixes away from the bigger hospitals so that the specialists there can do specialist things instead of spending 90% of their time treating stubbed toes.
tldr; complicated
Yeah it's true that for minor things it is not as bad.