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Medi-care reform: making it easier to see a doctor

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-25 16:45

BEIJING - Going to see the doctor was too expensive for 54-year-old Chinese peasant Song Zhiyao, but the introduction of a rural cooperative medicine scheme in 2007 has greatly eased his financial burden.

A new public-health reform under review might give even more help to Song and millions of other Chinese citizens who have borne their own medical bills for as long as two decades.

Too much to pay

Song has lived in Xijiang Village, Kaili City, of southwest China's Guizhou Province for half a century, and misses the days of barefoot doctors before the 1980s.

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"The villagers only paid a little money for the medical service at the doctor's small clinic, as the costs were basically covered by the state," he says. Although the young doctor could only handle injections or minor illnesses like coughs, Song was largely satisfied.

It was a time when China prided itself on a government sponsored medicine system, in which most Chinese enjoyed low-priced medical services.

But the climate changed in the 1980s when public health institutions were left to feed themselves because of lack of government funds. A guiding principle was that hospitals should and could be managed like enterprises according to economic rules, a novel idea for most Chinese. It was a starting point for hospitals to generate their own revenue by raising fees and aggressively selling drugs.

From that time, Song and his fellow villagers came to feel the burden of the costs of medicine. Living in a poverty-stricken county, Song and his wife earn less than 10,000 yuan annually by constructing houses in the five-thousand-people village, peopled by the Miao nationality.

In 2006, Song suffered severe piles and kept bleeding for a month. At first, he chose to stay at home instead of seeking treatment.

Like Song, it is common for many Chinese peasants to  "expect self-cure in face of small illnesses and await death in the face of big illness".

But the severe health condition compelled Song to visit the doctor, but neither the clinic in the village nor the county hospital could handle his complex problem.

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