Derbyshire on Chinese Healthcare.

John Derbyshire is one of my favorite presences on the Internet. He is an arch conservative and an expert on China. Every month on National Review Online, he publishes a diary. (He also hosts a weekly radio on NRO). In his February diary, he asked this question:

The big question about health care is, since it’s mostly technology based, why doesn’t it keep getting cheaper, like everything else to do with technology? A car, a computer, a TV, takes a smaller bite out of my income today than it did twenty years ago.

He asked an Economist this question and this is was the result:

He gave me a brisk economist’s answer: “Because someone else is paying for it.” Well, not in my case, obviously — I am, in point of fact, the “someone else” in that sentence — but for most Americans, this is true.

I will add this is also true in most places that have socialized medicine or something like it.

In China, they don't have socialized medicine. As I can tell you, it is pay as you go. The Chicoms, finally realizing that you need markets, have not tried to keep their healthcare communist.

And after talking about his meeting with that Economist, Derbyshire said this:

A friend tells me: “About a year ago my wife had an endoscopy done while we were in China on business. The cost was 150 yuan, less than twenty dollars. Recently in Arizona she had the same procedure. This time the bill came to $3,776.12. The only difference being in China they let her take the picture home with her.”*

Derbyshire goes on to speculate that more and more people will go to China for cheaper healthcare. You can see his whole diary passage about healthcare here.

*Today, I had a chest X-ray done and they let me take the picture home with me.