Is it true you pay a doctor to keep you healthy in China?

[alchemystical]

I heard this the other day:

 

"In China everyone pays a monthly stipend to their doctor whos job it is to keep them well. People go in for regular checkups where any changes noted and preventive measures prescribed before things go awry which in contrast to the west where people go when push has came to shove and the doctor prescribes a remedy that often just masks the symptoms instead of alleviating the cause and as such it reflects in cultural thinking for in China the best doctor is one that keeps you healthy and in the west its one that fixes you when you're sick and therein lies a key difference in their ways and means of dealing with the problem"

 

Is that true or just some starry eyed shtick?

[Leif]

This one is likely the most extreme of all the mentions of this that I have stumbled upon.

Such generalization is in contradiction with reports I read or overheard about healthcare in China (shortage of doctors, tickets to visit specialist sold on black market, doctor taking patients in batches thus there is no privacy, large number of people without health insurance nor money to pay for healthcare,.....).

I have always took this as something that perhaps could have been true at some time in history with some class of people (ruler, nobility,...), if not just a misused or misunderstood metaphor from some book.

It would be interesting to know what was the original source.
 

 

[thelerner]

I get the feeling many national healthcare services around the world, pay more attention to preventative care then the U.S. 

 

I've never been to China, but walking through Chicago's China town, the many herbal stores with plain and exotic herbs are like nothing that we have natively in the U.S.   I can't help thinking to put medicinal (& common) herbs so prominently on sale, points towards a much more holistic and preventative way of thinking.

[windwalker]

It's not just the system the people there have a totally different view about health and actively participate in maintaining their own.

 

In the u.s. it seems like a lot of people are waiting for the government to maintain something that they should be doing on their own.

 

Taiwan has a national health care system that everyone pays into.  Everyone.

 

 

 

In the US everybody always had access to health services for emergency treatment.  The key problem is one of controlling cost.  Not access.

 

 

[KuroShiro]

On 12/10/2017 at 5:11 PM, alchemystical said:

I heard this the other day:

 

"In China everyone pays a monthly stipend to their doctor whos job it is to keep them well. People go in for regular checkups where any changes noted and preventive measures prescribed before things go awry which in contrast to the west where people go when push has came to shove and the doctor prescribes a remedy that often just masks the symptoms instead of alleviating the cause and as such it reflects in cultural thinking for in China the best doctor is one that keeps you healthy and in the west its one that fixes you when you're sick and therein lies a key difference in their ways and means of dealing with the problem"

 

Is that true or just some starry eyed shtick?

 

 

In China people paid the local doctor to keep them healthy and free of disease, not to cure disease. His role was one of prevention. If in the group of families/community that had chosen one given doctor someone got sick all payments would stop or there would be a decrease in his payment (if payed yearly).

This was Classical Chinese Medicine.

 

Don't know if it's still common practice in some areas of China.

 

Just imagine what would have to change to implement this great notion of shifting the spotlight to prevention.

 

 

You might want to check out Yangsheng philosophy.

 

[alchemystical]

On 12/13/2017 at 0:45 AM, KuroShiro said:

 

 

In China people paid the local doctor to keep them healthy and free of disease, not to cure disease. His role was one of prevention. If in the group of families/community that had chosen one given doctor someone got sick all payments would stop or there would be a decrease in his payment (if payed yearly).

This was Classical Chinese Medicine.

 

Don't know if it's still common practice in some areas of China.

 

Just imagine what would have to change to implement this great notion of shifting the spotlight to prevention.

 

 

You might want to check out Yangsheng philosophy.

 

 

Thank you. I had a feeling that the reference was to "back in the day" China and not current China for the reasons other posters have outlined but was curious as to how factual this perspective actually was as I couldn't find anywhere else that mentioned it working like this, specifically the point you stated about prevention rather than cure.

 

Also fully agree with the comments that the U.S expects someone else to pick up all the pieces whereas other places the people are much more proactive with their life choices.

[Walker]

On 12/10/2017 at 0:11 PM, alchemystical said:

just some starry eyed shtick?

 

Starry eyed shit on a stick, I'm afraid. I attended two TCM universities in China, interned in hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai, and also visited numerous hospitals and clinics as a patient, guest, or to accompany patients in second- and third-tier cities as well as the countryside. Nothing like this is going on, and I kinda doubt it ever actually did. Sounds far too idealistic, and in ten years I certainly never heard any Chinese people waxing about the good old days when you paid your doctor to keep you healthy. Given that Chinese medicine enthusiasts as a whole looooove to yarn about the olden times, if there were something to this story, I'm pretty sure I'd have had to listen to endless retellings, right alongside the legends of Bianque's x-ray vision, Sun Simiao's pet tiger, etc, etc, etc.

 

Even the whole, "western medicine masks symptoms while Chinese medicine treats the root," thing is something of a fantasy, too, I'm afraid. Sadly for everybody, Chinese medicine often fails too, even when the diagnosis seems clear and when, according to theory, the prescription should work. Who can really say what the "root" is, and amongst those who can, who can reliably treat it? To be sure, there are degrees of skill, and some excellent physicians remain, but by and large Chinese medicine--like western medicine--involves lots of shooting shotguns into the dark. Which is not an indictment. Just the way things are. The human body-mind is a mystery, and shit on a stick is Chan, shit on a stick is Dao. 

Edited December 23, 2017 by Walker

[Pavel Karavaev]

It is an interesting approach. Earlier I often thought that when a person is very sick he can not earn money, and accordingly he can not pay for the treatment. In this case it is very practical to pay in advance  )))

[wenwu]

After living in China for a little over 15 years I can say that I never came across such across practice as the OP described

 

Maybe a log time ago but not now

 

Especially in the big cities China is largely shunning the traditional practices in order to appear up to date.

 

There are still some traditinal

 Medicine hospitals but these are vastly out numbered by the kind of hospital you would see in other places around the world.

 

People will still take herbal or home remedies from time ro time but you'l

[wenwu]

In all the time I lived in China I never heard of the practice mentioned by the OP.

 

A lot of traditional culture is being largely ignored by the current generation of Chinese.  This is in part in am attempt to show the world how up to date China has become.

 

Even where medicine is concerned western medicine has largly become the preference for most. You still see some herbal remedies and home treatments but maybe not more than other countries.

 

TCM hospitals still exist but are very much the minority.

 

There may be some provinces/towns/villages where this practice is going on still. If it did exist in the first place.

 

As an aside, these days the countries outside of China with a Chinese influence such as Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia have done a much better job in keeping the traditional culture in some ways.

[Wu Ming Jen]

The united states has a healthcare crisis. looking at alternatives that work in other countries is worthwhile.

 

We basically work for the government we pay taxes spending or making money. Money represents people and natural resources of a country. If the people are not healthy, cant afford the inflated doctor bills by the hand holding of insurance companies I would think this would not be in the best interest of the government. Without healthy people to work and harvest the resources is loss of funds.

 

China's population dwarfs the west. The net worth of alibaba the chinese amazon we would need to combine the net worth of ebay amazon and apple to get close to that number. Any industry sales in china dwarfs the west total sales (US medicine is a business) just by population alone.

 

China is extremely affordable to live in so the issue of healthcare is a non issue compared to the US. In other countries free healthcare is in the interest of the governments for good reasons.