Shanghai Daily news

"In no way should China's medical services be degraded into becoming nothing but a money-making machine," Minister of Health Gao Qiang pledged last July.
His remark resonated and sent a warm message to the people who are feeling the chill of the whopping cost of going to a doctor nowadays.
Indeed, expensive medical services have gone beyond what many ordinary people can afford.
A Ministry of Health survey in 2003 found that 48.9 percent of the people covered would not go to a doctor even if they were ill and 29.6 percent of the total surveyed would not be hospitalized even if they should be.
Most of the poor patients came from the countryside, the survey said.
The challenge for Gao is to put a brake on the wheels of the current medical care system that might otherwise head towards yet another abyss of unbearable costs for rank-and-file citizens.
To be honest, you can't comfortably label China's market-oriented medical reforms since the 1980s as a "total failure," as certain Chinese scholars have proclaimed.
Poor ethics
But the scholars' claim of failure does point to a glaring problem: Single-minded pursuit of profit on the part of many hospitals and the ever-decaying morality of quite a few doctors.
This article does not seek a quick cure for the country's thorny medical problems. Rather it calls for a swift end to the moral decadence of physicians that is adding to the pressure already on patients.
There is a strong philosophical point to be made here: Man doesn't have to be avaricious just because he can be in a given environment.
To put it plainly in a medical context: A doctor doesn't have to take or ask for bribes even if such a practice has been tacitly accepted in the medical circle.
If poor medical insurance coverage is a major problem to be addressed on Gao's watch, ending the deadweight losses caused by the avarice of many doctors is urgent.
Doctors' rampant charges to line their own pockets not only causes real financial loss to patients but stirs up their resentment to society. It's double jeopardy.
If every doctor and hospital believed that saving a life is better than making a million dollars by cheating, there would not be so much cursing of the medical profession by patients.
Some doctors also take bribes from drug dealers as well as from patients and there are drug retailers who rush to hide cheap but effective medications under the counter when you rush in at midnight with a running nose.
Got a cold? Sorry, we have only the most expensive drug.
Here are two classic examples of how physicians wring money from patients in a bad mad way.
In the case of the second affiliated hospital of Harbin Medical University in Heilongjiang Province, an old man named Weng Wenhui died after 67 days' treatment in this hospital and the total medical fees - according to the hospital - hit a whopping 5.5 million yuan (US$680,000).
The bill consisted of many fabricated and non-existent items. For example, the amount of blood transfusions in one day for Weng was more than double that of a normal person.
And then Weng had a test done on his chest after he was dead.
The despicable state of the minds of those doctors has profaned their holy vocation and they should be expelled from the profession.
A similar case occurred in Shenzhen in Guangdong Province. At the beginning of the year, Zhu Shaoxia, an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) patient in Shenzhen People's Hospital, was billed 1.2 million yuan for four months' treatment.
Later it was discovered that more than 10 thousand yuan of the bill occurred after Zhu's death.
Both Shenzhen and Harbin are big cities, and both hospitals are standard, large ones.
A former drug dispenser who quit her job out of disgust over the rotten behavior of some doctors gives us another glimpse into the state of the profession.
Liang Xin, a former drug sales person in Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province, was quoted in a report in the People's Daily last Wednesday as saying that her heart ached "whenever I recall the days I worked as a drug sales person."
The 30-ish Liang earned 10,000 yuan a month in those days but said she could no longer do a job that "is always in the dark."
"Everyone on the earth knows that doctors take our kickbacks," she said. "I knew 90 percent of the doctors in a hospital and not one of them was clean."
A doctor with the title of professor could get a monthly kickback of 100,000 yuan from her drug company, a sum more than 10 times a doctor's normal monthly income.
Who in the world do those doctors serve - drug salesmen or patients?
Patients might complain less if they were well insured. Unfortunately, according to Guan Zhiqiang, a researcher at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, China's total medical expenses so far this year have hit 700 billion yuan, more than 60 percent of which is borne by the patients themselves.
In small cities and towns, 44 percent of the population do not enjoy any kind of medical insurance.
When it comes to the countryside, the insurance coverage is even lower, as Gao Qiang has admitted.
Given such a stark reality, how can doctors look after their own pockets in such vile ways?
To Gao Qiang, it's not enough for the government to find more funding for hospitals.
He should make sure that bad apples stay out of the medical profession. There's no rule that says a free market has to lead to corruption.