May 172006
ABC radio’s Background Briefing has a disturbing programme on the Chinese healthcare system. (you can download the mp3 or read the transcript).  Market forces, and greed have cross-pollinated to produce a health system geared to milk the rich and ignore the poor. Want your nipples bleached? No problems. Spinal injury from the poorer part of town? Sorry, no can do.
Privatisation of health care in China has failed, and Beijing knows there may be social and political unrest as a result. The rich can buy good care – but for others the biggest concerns are incompetence, frayed services, and misery. In the case of a viral pandemic, weaknesses in the health system in China could affect the whole world.
[...] So it seems Newlife limits its responsibilities to hooking you up with a hospital that will perform the organ transplant. The actual *arrangements* that are made between local officials providing the organ and the hospitals seem to be a little less important. (you can read more on the overall state of the Chinese public health system here.) But boy, is that shirt white or what? This also raises the interesting question of the ethics of third party controlled advertising on medical blogs. By the very nature of Google advertising these ads are likely to be of a medical nature. But does the owner of the blog have any control or even awareness of their content? How might they feel receiving a small stipend for someone clicking through to a less than ethically sound procedure or service? [...]
Tell us more about this nipple bleaching procedure.