The health care system in China is absolutely horrible when compared to Hong Kong. I recently went to see an eye doctor in Shenzhen for vision problems including blurry vision and sensitivity to light. I was shocked by how bad the service was and the stark contract between China and Hong Kong. In my situation, I have severe myopia with -10 diopters in both eyes and so I take my eye care very seriously. The poor service and poor quality of Chinese health care stem from problems including too many patients (i.e. not enough doctors), poor quality of doctors and virtually no malpractice liability.
Because of the sheer number of people struggling to see the doctors in China, hospitals and clinics are always a packed and disorganized. The way it works in China is that when you go to a hospital, you wait in a long line to get a number from a clerk to see a doctor. You tell the clerk what your problem is and she will suggest the department that you should go visit. The cost to consult with a doctor is a measly 1-2 USD and so you can imagine, a ton of people go to see the doctor for really trivial things. There’s no such thing as making an appointment or RSVPing. After about an hour or two, your number is finally called and you find the doctor’s office yourself. Usually, there are still 1 or 2 people ahead of you so you stand in the door way while waiting for the people ahead of you to finish up with the doctor. When it’s your turn, you can be sure there will also be people standing behind you impatiently waiting for you to finish up.
When you finally go see the doctor, you’ll soon realize that this is probably one of the worst doctor’s you will have ever seen. I am not sure if it’s lack of training or lack of humanity because these guys just don’t care about you. They will ask you what’s wrong, examine you briefly and then start madly scribbling in your health documents. In my situation, I told him I was having vision problems and thought it might have been corneal abrasion since I had it before. He checked out my eyes under a white light, then use some dye and checked under blue light, mumbled something about infection and then started prescribing five different types of medicine. You see, in China, the reason why it can costs only 1-2USD to see the doctor is because they end up making the money back prescribing medicine. I asked the doctor what the problem was and he said it was a 3-4 week old infection. I told him that the problems started happening only a few days ago. He acted a bit surprised but ignored my observation and insisted it was indeed an infection. Then, I asked him what he was prescribing, but he didn’t respond. Then, I asked him how long would it take to recover and his response was that it was hard to say but it might be a long time. What a dumbass response! It was pretty clear to me that his doctor only cared about prescribing medicine and not about the health of my eyes. In China, doctors have a low base salary but they make a fat bonus on top if they prescribe expensive medicine and procedures. At the time, I was desperate since I couldn’t see clearly so I just bought whatever medicine he prescribed. It came out to 25 USD.
Probably the most serious problem with China’s healthcare is that doctors are able to misdiagnosis a problem with virtually no liability. There’s no relationship between the doctor and patient. Any medicine or treatments he prescribes most likely won’t kill you regardless if it resolves the original health issue or not. In my case, the eye doctor insisted it was an eye infection and so he prescribed some strange human growth hormone eye drops, anti-virus eye drops, anti-virus ganiclover eye gel and some weird powdered fruit tea. This doctor wasn’t sure what the cause of the infection was, i.e. bacterial, viral, etc and so he just prescribed both plus vitamins and some Chinese medicine. I was very skeptical about the diagnosis and the medicine but I was desperate and so I took it anyway. So, for two days, I used the medicine as he prescribed and my eyes were not getting better. In fact, they were getting worse. I couldn’t even read the letters on my laptop or look at my cell phone. I got desperate so on the following Monday, I made an emergency ophthalmologist appointment in Hong Kong. I was fed up with mainland Chinese doctors and needed to figure out what was wrong with my eyes. To make a long story short, I went to HK and the problem turned out to be just severe dry eyes with corneal abrasion! There were no infections, no bacteria and no viruses. The ophthalmologist in HK gave me some Bausch & Lomb eye drops and drops to reduce inflammation. My eyes immediately responded to the treatment and I started seeing more clearly.
Even though China has done very well on an international level, (e.g. surpassing Japan in GDP and surviving the recession), China still has a lot of internal problems like poor health care and mediocre education. For healthcare, I think some significant reform is necessary like training more doctors, better screening, increasing prices and less self-serving incentives like medicine/treatment bonuses. Health care in China may be cheap but it definitely comes cheap at the price of poor quality.
