Crowd Protests Health Care in China

The New York Times reports:

Some 2,000 people mobbed and ransacked a hospital in southwestern China on Friday in a dispute over medical fees and shoddy health care practices, a human rights group said today.

At least 10 people were injured when police broke up the demonstration at Guang’an City No. 2 People’s Hospital, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The area was described as under tight police control today, with at least five people detained on suspicion of instigating a riot.

The unrest erupted after a 3-year-old boy died in the hospital, where he had been rushed for emergency treatment for ingesting pesticides. There were conflicting reports about how much medical care the boy received.

The human rights group said in a statement that essential medical care was denied the boy until his grandfather, who was taking care of him, could pay for the treatment. The boy died after the grandfather left to raise money, the group said.

An official report from the New China News Agency confirmed that a dispute over medical fees erupted at the hospital, but also said doctors there had treated the boy even though the grandfather did not have $82 to pay for the service.

Local residents who heard about the incident staged a demonstration at the hospital that quickly turned violent. People smashed windows and destroyed equipment at the six-story facility. The human rights group said three police vans were overturned.

The police forcefully dispersed the crowd and some 10 people were injured, according to the human rights group.

The New China News Agency did not report the demonstration or the police crackdown in its dispatch, saying only there had been a dispute over fees. The state-run newspaper Sichuan Daily reported today that local authorities were looking into the matter and that they “attached great importance” to investigating the causes of the boy’s death.

Medical costs are an enormously sensitive issue for tens of millions of people in Chinese cities and hundreds of millions in the countryside who have no medical insurance and no public safety net to cover soaring health care costs.

The Communist Party-controlled government once offered rudimentary medical care for nominal prices in the countryside. But hospitals were left largely to fend for themselves in the rising market economy of the 1990’s.

Many ceased providing even emergency care for people who could not pay hospital fees in cash in advance of treatment.

Providing better access to health care and education and reducing the country’s growing urban-rural wealth gap have become part of President Hu Jintao’s pledge to build a “harmonious society.”

No word yet from Bernie Sanders,Robert Kuttner,or Howard Dean on this one.