China has launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign targeting its hospitals, pharmaceutical industry and insurance funds as it grapples with mounting economic challenges and long-standing public frustration about high costs in the behemoth health care sector.
More than 180 hospital leaders, including Communist Party secretaries and hospital heads, have been put under investigation so far this year, according to state agency China News Service, with at least 10 of those voluntarily surrendering since June.
Good for them
As much as I’d like to shit on China, good on them. We should be doing the same thing in the US.
China’s health care system has long been rife with accusations of hospitals over-prescribing treatments to inflate bills or taking kickbacks from pharmaceutical representatives to procure and prescribe overpriced medicines, which in China are distributed at in-house pharmacies.
Despite wide health insurance coverage, absolute costs of health care can be a heavy burden for many in China. Hospitals are the front line for these issues, as they generally take on a role that might be served by a primary care physician in other countries like the United States, in addition to other services.
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And the burden of health care costs on families – and the system – is only expected to rise as China’s population ages.
My non sequitur was missing, but I found it. A crack down on corruption in healthcare is an improvement to their system and is irrelevant to the Capitalist Media Party Line bullshit about the imminent collapse of China.
