From Reuters: "A Chinese peasant woman who suffered a brain haemorrhage was left at the undertakers alive for cremation because her family could no longer afford hospital treatment, state media said Friday."
"The case," according to the article, is not isolated, but merely "the latest in a series of tragedies illustrating China's stretched health care system and the inability of rural workers to meet spiraling medical costs."
The devestated family noted that 3 days of care cost more than 10,000 yuan, or the sum of the family's life savings.
The fundamental reason foir this? Communism? Asian disregard for individual life? According to the official quoted in the article, the answer is "the absence of a social welfare system," the very system that many on the far-right in this country lament. Having experienced the welfare state for so long, many people take it for granted, assuming that things would be the same or better without it. What they fail to realize is that those same welfare policies that some conservatives despise allow families to invest their money somewhere else other than education or neccessary medical needs, such as raising their standards of living.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment