Supervision of prices is also also little specific

It took more than three years of heated debate, of Roundtripping between 16 government departments and agencies, and even a report of last minute last March before Chinese authorities fail to publish, yesterday, the plan to reform the health system of the country, claimed by the population.

According to the official press release accompanying the project, Beijing promises, by 2020, "safe, effective and cheap" health services to its 1.3 billion inhabitants, which regularly denounce the deep injustices of a system benefiting only a minority of Chinese and weighing on the ability of the population to consume.

During the reign of Mao, the families had a rudimentary health system but free, supported by the popular communes in campaigns and by State enterprises in cities. But, since the great reforms of the 1980s and the gradual disappearance of these collective structures, households are almost only to deal with their health spending boosted artificially.

To compensate for the gradual disengagement of the State involved more than height of 10 of their funding more than 90 thirty years , hospitals to treat the population, had to reinvent itself. If they remained officially "public", they have developed a very liberal model. They offer consultations message based on the experience of the physician and regularly encourage artificial inflation of the orders. The skids are daily. Lesser cold justifies limitation of several drugs, often antibiotics, sold in the hospital pharmacy. Patients are sometimes prescribe operations or transplants unnecessary but very lucrative for physicians.

Overwhelmed by these abuses, less well-off families must often go into debt to life to heal one of their. And hundreds of millions of Chinese have them the means to treat regularly and saving the bulk of their income to prevent any accident of life. If the system feeds resentment against the authorities, it also weighs on projects of revival of domestic consumption dream Beijing to break the dependence of the country exports and foreign investment.

A blur on the measures

In his reform project, the Government promises to fight against the commercialism of the hospitals to become real public services. Their finances, ensure the text, will be better controlled. The price consultations and medications could be framed and funds will be made available to upgrade equipment and especially to develop the health network in rural areas. In March, Beijing had assured that a package of 850 billion yuan (92 billion euros) was programmed for the first three years of reform.

If the experts seem to welcome the good intentions of the Government project, they are worried about the uncertainty still surrounding the core of the measures. The methods of control of hospitals, which today are the wealth of municipalities and of many producers of drugs, do not appear to validated. The idea of a centralization of revenues and funding has already been rejected. Supervision of prices is also also little specific. "The most difficult part will now be put it into practice," blew, yesterday, in the "South China Morning Post", Wen Jianmin, one of managers in the Wangjing Hospital in Beijing.