Posted By Damjan DeNoble
In a post at Speak Without Interruption, an online magazine, Lloyd Lofthouse, author of My Splendid Concubine , comments on how health care in China is following the American private health care model down a path that will lead to greater inequality in health provision.
In 141 B.C.E., more than two thousand years ago, a new Han emperor came to sit on the Dragon Throne….Wudi believed that all people should have the right to buy certain commodities and not be priced out of the market. He implemented government monopolies in certain critical areas like salt, alcohol and iron.
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After his death, a great debate known as the “Debate on Salt and Iron” took place. The end result was Wudi’s government monopolies were abolished. The poor could no longer afford many essential commodities. The rich grew wealthier. Soon after that, the Han Dynasty entered a period of stagnation sort of like what is taking place in America today where more than forty million Americans live without healthcare; the national debt has soared to more than ten trillion dollars, and families are losing their homes in huge numbers…
While reading Mr. Lofthouse’s article I randomly associated to a line very familiar to any Battlestar Galactica fans; “This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.” That the reader should associate Mr. Lofthouse’s words with the cyclical nature of human folly, is an effect that Mr. Lofthouse undoubtedly intended when he related the decline of the Han empire in 141 B.C.E. to the current decline of America.
What’s interesting , however, is how readily I agreed with the relation he makes. The fall of society might really be a simple matter of failing to provide people with the basic goods and services they need, health care most of all.
Mr. Lofthouse goes on to say that China has readily adopted some of the Western world’s other bad habits, like unreasonably heavy consumption of fast foods. But, he says, health care, at least, should not be treated like a fad, simply because the impact of a health care system with obese health costs and poor health outcomes would rumple the entire fabric Chinese society.
I tend to agree. And I also believe that the future of Chinese private health care is not the ‘standard American price’ high end hospital, but that there is hope for a more innovative health care delivery system in China (and, in a previous post, I have tried thinking through what that might look like). Moreover, I find solace in the fact that the Chinese government seems aware of the dangers that uncontrolled health costs in the private sector would bring.
On a closing note, the final message of Battlestar Galactica was a twist on the one repeated throughout the series. “This has all happened before, but will it happen again?” Coincidentally, this is a good question to keep in mind as China moves forward in shaping its health identity.
2 Comments
Thank you for your thoughtful response. It’s amazing how often fiction mirrors reality. I’ve read that fiction often reveals and explains what is happening in the real world. If we want to know what it was like to live in the past, read fiction written from that time to find out. Also, the work by some of our greatest authors seem more like time machines taking us toward a future that we may not want to reach. I’m thinking of H.G. Wells. Then again, some fiction shows alternatives that give us hope. I’ve also enjoyed watching Battlestar Galactica. Currently I’m watching a series called la femme Nikita wondering how close to the truth it may be and if so, what does that tell us about the world we live in. It just so happens that I’m also reading a book, Murder of an American Nazi, which goes into detail about the CIA’s totalitarian/fascist shenanigans during and after WWII, and there seems some parallels to Nikita that are frightening. I agree that China may eventually decide to branch off and go its own way. After all, in China the culture is guided by Confucianism and Taoism’s philosophies (and of course the Five Great Relationships that Confucius wrote down and taught more than twenty-four hundred years ago, which means the government has to think of the welfare of the people sooner or later and do what is right or face the consequences, The Mandate of Heaven. That means if the “Communist” Chinese government doesn’t fix it, someone else will after the next revolution/upheaval and change. In China, when one dynasty fell and was replaced by another, this was usually the reason why.
Fiction certainly offers a nice way to put some of the great themes of the world into a cohesive narrative. The best shows don’t shy away from the tough themes, and Battlestar (James swears I’m obsessed) has done a better job than most at confronting the tricky issues.
The problem with upheavals/revolutions is that they are rarely (I can’t think of one) led by doctors and medical staff. At best, or worst in the case of the Nazi horror, doctors play supportive roles during times of seachange.
Healthcare’s best chance is during times of prosperity, because those in power have finally stepped back enough to put it down as a priority. But, it is precarious because when a nation rises without a proper health care net, it is like a very tall house of bricks that has been put together without the aid of mortar. So, unfortunately, fixing the problem, like we are seeing now in America, often requires one to take down the house in order to fix it.