Migrant's death triggers rumination on medication
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-13 15:21

Condition of medical care: Critical

The high cost of having a baby in Beijing highlights the crisis in China's ailing health care system.

High fees make the nearby clinic of an elite Beijing hospital out of reach for a pregnant woman, Xing Xiaoying, so she hails the new low-cost hospital in her neighborhood.

The registration fee of 1,000 yuan (US$124) at Shangdi Clinic of the No. 3 Hospital of Beijing University represents almost a month's income for her husband. Xing, in her seventh month of pregnancy, finds the high cost hard to believe. The new hospital opened last week.

Xing's case highlights the problem of the high cost of health care in China where basical medical services used to be a right.

The situation is so bad and the craving for money so intense that just eight days before the new hospital opened, a migrant worker was left to die in a Beijing hospital hallway because he couldn't pay for treatment.

The new Shangdi Hospital in Haidian District in western Beijing is the first one geared to low-income residents and migrant workers in the national capital.

The registration fee is only 0.5 yuan and the charge for an uncomplicated delivery is only 1,000 yuan - far less than the cost of having a baby in the city's other hospitals.

"It's too costly for me to give birth in other hospitals, which would charge at least some 3,000 yuan," said Xing, who went to ask about the delivery charge the day the new hospital opened.

The high-cost clinic, which says it caters to high-end customers, is not far away. The minimum yearly membership fee is 13,800 yuan and the top-class membership, which provides tailored private doctor service, costs 98,000 yuan a year.

The new low-cost hospital is part of the effort to improve health care.

For nearly two decades, the system has been driven by economic interests in a market economy, and it is losing its public service character.

Though there are more hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses and medical appliances since reform began in the 1980s, the corresponding rise in charges has put hospitals off-limits to low-income people.

Health minister Gao Qiang says outpatient expenses rose 13 percent and hospitalization expenses rose 11 percent in the last eight years -- far more than the rise per-capita income.

Further, the former medical expense cooperation mechanism, which once covered most rural residents, vanished with the decline of the rural collective economy.

And most city dwellers lost the privilege of having their medical expenses covered by enterprises or the state. Meanwhile, a broad umbrella of medical insurance is yet to be established.

Statistics show 44.8 percent of the urban population and 79.1 percent of rural residents have no medical insurance of any form.