Shaun Rein by Fantake via FlickrWhy is there so much corruption in China's health care system? Part of the problem is that doctors make so little. A brain surgeon named Dr. Xie at a famous hospital complained to me that he officially made only $400 a month, which is less than many factory workers now get. Doctors can't make money legally, he lamented. Some 95% of hospitals are state-owned, and the government caps consultations at $2 to $3 even for the country's most famous doctors, so that even peasants can afford to see the best ones.Patients keep on paying their doctors bribes, so they can get the best possible help. While in the industry, salaries are going up, in hospitals and in government wage developments do not keep up with those developments and inflation. Keeping the costs low for patients, is one of the reason hospitals cannot pay a decent salary. Shaun Rein gives the examples of the San Francisco police department and the Singapore government, where decent salaries halt corruption and improve the quality of the services. Shaun Rein:
There was shock last year when one official's diary detailing his sexual escapades hit the Internet. People were shocked not that he had taken bribes to pay for weekly visits to hookers but that those bribes had totaled only $10,000 over many years. They thought the amount would be much greater.More arguments in Forbes.
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Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
3 comments:
Bribery is a Chinese culture. They even do that in foreign countries. Greed is a human thing -- if there is human, there is greed, there is bribery. OF course China is top on the list.
There are other issues in China that create or continue the culture of bribery -- the inequality of wealth distribution. The weathy have the power and the means to be more powerful -- good education for their children, good connection, even good healthy food for better health and better ability to face the life!
Sometime it is even strange for me to use this arguement - before the introduction of market economy hence communise time, wealth were better distrubuted, basic education for children from poor family and the oppressed at lease were free, hospital and doctors were free -- and now for many these basic are missing from their lives.
Increasing the pay of the doctors or government officials or whatever is only a temporary solution. Chinese has a saying -- there is always a mountain higher than the next one. In this case how high is high for the increase of salary should go?? It would be childish to think it is an end solution.
There is another Chiness saying - when you are want to remove weeds, you need to dig and remove the roots --- they always come back if you don't.
Cindy
apology for another response ...
re- more pay for doctors: market economy groud rule - supply and demand. Give a decent wage by all means, but providing more doctors would make even bribery disappear. Always work.
But 'making' more doctors, nurses or teachers (they are underpaid even in country such as the USA and Netherlands) are not impressive and does not give an impact such as the grand brideges connecting Hanchou and Shanghai, or the railway tracks to Tibet. They are more gratifying and rewarding for the decision makers. And of course since they are mega, mega billions dollars projects, the reward from bribery is even better than letting unqualified persons into medical school.
Not only in China, same apply to the US and other countries, market economy if not managed properly, the poor would suffer and the rich getting richer.
Cindy
apology for another response ...
re- more pay for doctors: market economy groud rule - supply and demand. Give a decent wage by all means, but providing more doctors would make even bribery disappear. Always work.
But 'making' more doctors, nurses or teachers (they are underpaid even in country such as the USA and Netherlands) are not impressive and does not give an impact such as the grand brideges connecting Hanchou and Shanghai, or the railway tracks to Tibet. They are more gratifying and rewarding for the decision makers. And of course since they are mega, mega billions dollars projects, the reward from bribery is even better than letting unqualified persons into medical school.
Not only in China, same apply to the US and other countries, market economy if not managed properly, the poor would suffer and the rich getting richer.
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