Fascinating!
Wow, thanks @lujia, this is really good insight. I had no idea this stuff was going on in China.
I am particularly interested in the conflictual relationship between doctors and patients. This could be a very serious drag on the system. Liability laws, even when they are well-meaning, end up disincentivizing doctors to intervene, especially on cases that are serious and desperately need help. One of my uncles, a gynaecologist in New York, once told me that his liability insurance was far and away his highest cost, and that patients would sue for absolutely anything. In America, you can sue for astronomically high sums, because they have a legal insititution called punitive damage. If somebody causes you trouble, you can sue not only to recover the costs of the damage done, but also to “punish” the offender. Punishment depends on subjective evaluation of the offense, i.e. on how deeply you have been made unhappy by the offense: the more unhappy, the more money you can demand. Unsusrprisingly, most people say they are very unhappy, and demand a lot of money.
In this situation, he explained, if you see a woman with a potentially troubled pregnancy, you’d better stay the hell away from her. If you try to treat her and she or the baby have issues, she’ll sue you into a smoking hole. But if you don’t touch her, then you are good. Of course, she might suffer from lack of treatment, and that’s too bad but not really your problem. But doctors, mostly, choose this career because they want to heal patients, so some (including my uncle) buy expensive insurance and carry on. Eventually the premiums rose so high that he just decided to go out of business. In Europe, this problem is less exacerbated, also because we do not have punitive damage.
What is the situation like in China? Can you tell us more about these “professionals”? Do you know of any community-based responses, like this one in Greece?