Issues In Rural Health: Access, Hospitals, And Reform
As the saying goes, the body is the capital of revolution. From an economic point of view, if health is regarded as a commodity, it has its inherent use value and exchange value. When people are born, health is of use value. As people grow older and more socialized, they will have more and more desires. The pressure of survival forces them to exchange health for money, fame, status and so on. No matter poverty or wealth, a person’s lifetime is unavoidable to fall ill.
As such, they have to come into connect with hospitals. As is known to all, the gap between the rich and the poor is still evident at the current stage, and many regions still have the problems of difficult and expensive medical treatment. Health care reform is a major challenge of national macroeconomic regulation and control, but it is also urgent. This article mainly analyzes the medical reform from the economic point of view, and puts forward the following questions: what is the root of being “difficult to see a doctor” and “expensive to see a doctor”? What is the government’s problem of macro regulation in the medical industry? What aspects need to be considered in medical reform? What are the recommendations for health care reform? Health care involves every ordinary family, and the right direction of health care reform will really benefit every family.
To start with, the root of difficulties and high expense in medical care are unbalance. It is easy to see that the better hospitals are in the bigger cities. On the one hand, the high prices in big cities increase the cost of medical treatment; on the other hand, it occupies the rural areas of the original few medical resources. The imbalance of medical resources is accompanied by the imbalance of the technical team. The imbalance between the rich and the poor makes it difficult for the poor to afford the high cost of medical treatment. From the national level, although a complete medical system has been gradually established, the proportion of reimbursement for the rural population is low, leading to the phenomenon of serious illness and ruin from time to time.
Besides, the government has not invested enough funds in public hospitals, but to some extent, it has curbed the boom of private hospitals. For profit, public hospitals may have unwritten rules to replace inexpensive drugs with equivalent high-priced drugs and even acquiesce in asking the patient for a red envelope. All these have virtually increased the burden of patients. There are at least four aspects ought to be considered in medical reform, say, cost, risk, revenue and prospect. Any drastic reform will have some risks and all kinds of challenges. The government should consider the possible risks ahead of time and try its best to deal with them. Do not choose to remain unchanged because of risks. The government should do the medical business that benefits people’s livelihood and seek benefits for the common people. For health care reform, the government must consider its prospects. Nursery rhymes in medical institutions need sustainable development as well. “We have also found that in reducing financial barriers to care, URBMI most significantly benefits the poor and those with previous inpatient care” (Lin, Liu & Chen, 2009). The current problem of the medical industry is the place where the government needs to make great efforts to rectify it.
First of all, the government should carry out macro regulation and control to cut off behind the scenes and make the medical industry clear. Second, the government should promote the integration of large hospitals and formulate a unified and complete hospital system as far as possible. At the same time, we should improve the medical insurance system and increase the proportion of serious illness reimbursement. In addition, improve the level of medical resources and technical resources of grass-roots hospitals, so that the rural population have more choices to see a doctor. “We have also found that in reducing financial barriers to care, URBMI most significantly benefits the poor and those with previous inpatient care” (Lin, Liu & Chen, 2009).
Finally, the upsurge of “orthodox medical ethics” and “establishing medical ethics” should be raised in the whole medical field, and the moral sense and responsibility of medical service personnel should be strengthened. “With the type of market-driven system, appropriate price and utilization levels for health care would be reached within the context of future economic growth and living standards. (Naslund, 1994)”. Naslund intends to make steady development of medical and health undertakings through control the “unbridled demand for health care services”. But from my point of view, this view cannot be implemented in China. “Would more medical care improve the health of the US population? The commonly accepted answer to this question among practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and the public in the modern era of medicine up to the 1960s was ‘of course’” (Silver, 1983). Now I still think so.
