Drugs More Expensive in China Than in the West

choi

本文通过一路BBS站telnet客户端发布

Kathrin Hille, China: The rural and poor still lack services. Financial
Times, Sept. 30, 2009.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b16760f0-abc8-11de-9be4-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Quote:

"'We have the wrong incentive structure' for hospitals and doctors, says Mr
Chen [Zhu 陈竺, health minister]. Chinese clinics get close to half of their
revenues from drug sales, and doctors’ incomes are also linked to such
sales.

"This has distorted treatment patterns and encouraged corruption and waste;
pharmaceutical expenditure accounted for more than 40 per cent of total
health expenditure in 2003, almost three times the OECD average.

“'For many of our drugs, the final price the patient has to shoulder is far
higher in China than even in developed countries,' says a marketing
executive of a European pharmaceutical company

My comment: There is no need to read the rest.


-------------Separately
Gordon Fairclough, LONG MARCH | The revolution at 60: In China, Rx for
Ailing Health System. Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125556557369186287.html

My comment: This report is unremarkable. However, the quotation below gives
me shudder: In countryside, at least of China, most doctors have no medical
degrees or trainings, and they are FARMERS at the same time.

"At the local health clinic, not far from the highway exit ramp, Mei Ruying
diagnoses patients with little more than a stethoscope and a thermometer. To
keep abreast of new drugs, Ms. Mei, who lacks a medical degree, reads
instructions enclosed in the boxes. China's rickety health-care system
relies on thousands of practitioners like Ms. Mei. Often, they are poorly
compensated and ill-equipped to serve their big rural constituencies.
According to the national health ministry, just 17% of China's medical
workers in 2005 were university graduates. In village clinics and township
hospitals, just 2% were.

"In Qunguang, Ms. Mei's clinic income comes from fees for giving injections
and the 15% markup she is allowed to charge for dispensing medicines. Still,
she says, her medical work doesn't earn enough to support her. "If I didn't
do farming, I couldn't even feed myself," says Ms. Mei, who, along with her
husband, grows rice on a small plot. Ms. Mei, who was a midwife before
being selected to become a village doctor, passed an equivalence exam for a
technical-high-school diploma in the 1990s. She says she thinks that is
enough for her to do her job. 'It's complicated. We need a lot of medical
knowledge,' says Ms. Mei. 'But you learn through experience.'

--