Nice to open Jane Austen's Regency World magazine and seeing my book covers looking back at me:

   This morning, while sipping my coffee and looking at my Twitter feed, I saw a much re-tweeted blog post that contained misinformation about health care in China. The writer was arguing that medical innovation does not arise out of a single-payer hospital system. Medicine and medical breakthroughs only come about in the robust environment of capitalism.
   I could quibble, but I'm not going to argue about that. What I took exception to was the blog writer's portrayal of a Chinese hospital and Chinese medical care as squalid and dirty. Overall, that's a misleading picture.
   First, China has prosperous provinces (the ones on the coast, the ones filled with factories and trade) and it has poorer provinces. Better health care is available in the more prosperous areas and in the bigger cities. That applies to us as well -- if you live in a dinky little small town, there is no giant gleaming hospital down the road, is there? ​

I had the very great pleasure of teaching medical English to some doctors in China and I learned something of their lives.  They do not enjoy the prestige and of course, nothing like the salaries, of their counterparts in the West. It was pretty routine, however, for a family to "tip" the surgeon with a substantial bribe before an operation in the hope that he or she would give their best efforts, or give them some lavish gift. 

So far as I could understand, the Chinese do not have a family doctor. In Canada, the GP is the gateway to specialists. If you want to see an arthritis specialist or a hearing specialist, you must be referred through your family doctor. Then you might wait for weeks or months. That is a single-user system.

 In terms of the facilities themselves, most of the hospitals and clinics I went to in China could stand comparison with the oldest parts of my local hospital in Canada (endless corridors, linoleum everywhere, that sort of thing) and the new hospitals could stand comparison with ours as well.
But China is, on a per-capita basis, a much poorer country than the West, so yes, there are going to be clinics in rickety old buildings, and ancient-looking equipment. But China had advanced rapidly in economic terms, if not in terms of personal liberty.

Some doctors study Western medicine, some study Chinese Traditional Medicine and some hospitals offer both kinds of treatments. Another feature of Chinese hospitals that we don't have in the west is that instead of drinking fountains with cold water, they have spigots in the hallway that dispense scalding hot water so people can make tea or prepare instant noodles. 

If you want a view of the "real" China, I highly recommend the movie, "The Farewell." The opening scene and several other scenes, are set in a hospital.  Wonderful performances and a touching story.