Will Patients Bear the Brunt?

As the separation of medical services from drug sales has become a top priority in the reform of China's health care system, there is hope that medical expenses will fall and the services will improve, as has happened in many developed countries as a result of similar separation reform. Nevertheless, whether this model can live up to the public's expectation is still too early to tell.

Currently, it is pharmaceutical sales that help China's hospitals remain profitable. They are able to sell prescribed medicines to patients at prices far higher than the ex-factory rates. If hospitals can no longer include pharmaceutical sales to medical services as a result of the proposed reform, patients may get much cheaper medicine elsewhere, which is of course in their own interests.

However, without enough financial input, how will hospitals manage to survive when they are forbidden to sell expensive medicines? If not carefully tackled, the separation reform may result in severe aftermaths. It's quite possible that hospitals will raise various charges, like those for examinations, diagnosis and treatment, and finally patients may be burdened by higher costs.

Therefore, to make the separation benefit the public, there must be enough financial input and also an effective monitoring system in place.

Shanghai Securities News

Active Government Interference Is Key

Before the Spring Festival, a time of spending and joy for many Chinese, reports on indignant unpaid migrant workers resorting to extreme actions to recover their wages were frequent in the media. While such behaviors are criticized by some officials, it's easy to discover that most of them do so only because through sheer desperation they have no other recourse. Ultimately these hapless people only want what is owed to them.

Protecting the rights of every honest laborer is the driving force behind social development. Migrant workers' failure to recover owed wages shows the government's inability to safeguard the finest quality of its citizens-honesty. It is always the honest workers, who toil year round, that are cheated by unscrupulous employers.

It's the government's responsibility to build up harmonious and stable labor relations. In this sense, to get owed wages should be the obligation of the government, rather than the uphill struggle of disadvantaged workers.

Nanfang City News