Don most people have health insurance to help pay for the costs of surgery?
A. Until the 1980s, China’s hospitals and health-care network covered just about everybody. Then they were ordered to turn a profit. Since that change, two-thirds of China’s population has no access to health care. For this unfortunate segment of the population, this pay-as-you-go system can be a bitter pill to swallow: cash up front or no treatment. In 2006, the World Health Organization ranked China fourth from the bottom of 191 countries in terms of the fairness of its medical coverage.
