Healthcare Crisis in Rural China

In recent years, China has been facing a health care crisis in its rural regions. During China’s great Cultural Revolution and the several decades following it, rural health care was in prime form. Nine out of ten country people had access to subsidized health clinics run by government sponsored doctors. From 1952 to 1982, the infant mortality rate fell from 200 per 1,000 live births to only 34. Average life expectancy increased nearly doubled from 35 years of age to 68 years of age.

However, after an age of great development in health care, progress in rural China seems to be reversing. China’s nationwide push towards capitalist ideals has been a large cause of this. While China’s cities are developing at incredible speeds, rural China is being left in the dust. But ignoring these rural areas may end up hurting China as a whole if not dealt with soon.

Today, 79% of rural residents have little or no health insurance. With new capitalistic ideals, China’s hospitals have been told that they now need to finance a larger portion of their expenses themselves (previously, hospitals were heavily subsidized by the government). To cope with this, hospitals are increasing fees for their patients. It follows that out-of-pocket spending for country residents on health care is sky-high.

It is no doubt that China’s economy has been booming. A look at almost any economic measure shows significant progress. For the past 20 years, average annual GDP growth has been a stunning 9.7%. According to the World Bank, China has lifted 400 million people out of poverty in the past two decades.

The trends in economic prosperity and health insurance coverage are on a crash course and it looks as if China’s health care problems could overpower China’s economic growth. Many rural residents who fall ill choose not to seek necessary medical attention. This choice is dangerous and often lethal. Oftentimes, many residents who do chose to seek medical care do so at the expense of living above the poverty line. In other words, the out-of-pocket expenses the rural residents pay, when ill, put them back below poverty. There have been numerous reports of rural citizens using education, food, and living expenses towards medical bills.

Furthermore, the traditional Chinese way of borrowing money from friends and family to pay for expensive medical conditions could become difficult. The working population, alike much of the developed world, is ageing fast and according to some predictions, China will have only two working people per person over 60 years old in 2040 – in other words, there will be fewer working people to borrow from. Currently there are 6.4 people for every person over 60 years old. According to a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, China may be the first country to grow old before it becomes rich.

These obstacles have nation-wide, and even global, health implications too. Many epidemics such as SARS, Bird Flu, and HIV are not easily contained in rural China directly because these areas lack proper health care. In a worst case scenario, it is imaginable that these diseases could become more widespread internationally as a result of poor containment in rural China.

The most effective way to curb this dilemma is to offer affordable health insurance in rural China. Increases in national economic prosperity and development can only take China so far. Full development into a mature and well-developed country requires a comfortable lifestyle for all of its citizens, or at least accessibility to it. The inability for so many residents to pay for their own health care and well being does not make for a comfortable lifestyle. Thus providing adequate healthcare to all of its citizens is one area China will need to master before it can be labeled well-developed.