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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese healthcare system is not so different from that in the US. It is primarily employer-sponsored insurance, with subsidized insurance programs for poor and rural folk.

Up until 2005, roughly 10% of the population couldn't even access healthcare, at which point the PRC built out more care centers and invested in training more doctors, but there's still a significant shortage, such that scalpers sell outpatient appointment tickets for 10-15x markup over the actual appointment cost.

There's plenty of ways the two countries are different, but healthcare seems like an odd choice to try to "one-up" the US on, even if its programs like medicare, medicaid, social security disability and others still leave gaps.

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Thats not true though.

First of, even per capita, the USA is at 8th place while China is 74.

For sure China has a problem due to its gigantic size and amount of people to even be able to reach its people, but the health care costs are nowere as high as USA has. USA is actually the country with the highgest % of GDP spend for health care alone.

Just checkout a YT video from an US American going to a normal chinese hospital and then compare the bill.

And in parallel the USA is dismantling medicare, medicad and co.

This is also directly reflected in the life expetency: US Americans are getting less old than Chinese people.

Rural China has a per capita GDP 1/10th of the US adjusting for purchasing power; if their health care wasn't cheaper only the very richest could afford anything at all. Even the wealthy coastal areas are 1/3 of the US.

China and the US have the same life expectancy of 79 years, which is a very recent phenomenon due to the 2005-2018 changes I mentioned earlier. Obesity, lack of exercise and other cultural factors weigh down the US life expectancy compared to all other Western nations. China's use of abortion during the one child policy era also prevented a lot of people who would have had chronic medical conditions and disabilities from being born.

It is not yet true, however, that Americans are getting "less old", though it may soon depending on how China manages it's own growing obesity problem and tobacco use.

So your main argument is, that the US American health care system is good and has to be so expensive because people can afford to pay more?!

Feel free to us europe than or germany. We pay less and more people are better of than the US Americans.

US Americans pay 2.5 times more than the avg high income nation: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...

Were is the benefit of paying that much more if you are not getting older than others?

In a thread about China, I replied to a post about how American healthcare is bad.

My main argument, which is in my first comment, is that healthcare is a bad way to show the difference between China and the US, since they are actually have a lot of similarities, especially with access at the lower end of the income spectrum.

There's literally no reason to bring other countries into the conversation other than to say "US is bad", which does nothing to change the reality of healthcare access in China.

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