A Chinese Pharmacist Found Out He Had Cancer. Then He Vanished.

This is indeed a touching and heartbreaking story. However, I can’t help to wonder the details that are left out in this article. In the place where I live, Shanghai, my Medicare covered 80% of cost if I get cancer or any other serious disease. I also have a 2000¥ (about 292$) personal medical aid that I can resort to if I desire any foreign or private treatment that’s outside the scope of my coverage. Did the author initiate any sort of inquiry in the local Medicare department? I’m aware that the National Medicare will cover more cost if your income is lower, and more aid will be granted. In some area Medicare will cover up to 95% of medical cost, combined with the aid, a patient should only expect to pay less than 3% of total cost. I assume in this case the Medicare did cover a substantial amount of cost, the family just can’t afford the rest. The problem here, as much as the author wants it to be shown, has nothing to do with Medicare. How will a country navigate itself when it just experienced the fastest growth the world has ever seen, and still growing? How can a government balance the wealthy and the poor when tens of millions of people are lifted from poverty? How will the government takes care 1.4 billion people across this vast territory? There will always be people like the Tang family who need help. We can only help if we know the real problem. It’s still poverty, not Medicare.

This is a heart-rending story. When one reads it in juxtaposition with the January 31, 2018, piece on the involvement of tech giants in the healthcare fields in China, it is positively ghastly. Alibaba, and others, use AI to deliver increasing numbers of serious diagnoses to the Chinese, obviating some of the problems created by an acute shortage of physicians. But what good is a cancer diagnosis at the earliest stages when, as here, no treatment is available for economic or other practical reasons? I shudder to think of the same "system" being instituted in the US, especially if done at the behest of the present administration. Diagnosis without access to care/treatment is a cruelty that only dictators and oligarchs would totally fail to understand.

Is there some sort of GoFundMe account I can contribute to? Heartbreaking story, would love to help the parents financially if possible.

This man-made World is a cold place. Keep your loved one's close. Power and Profit reign supreme.

NY Times~~please keep updating this story. It is just heartbreaking; you can feel the parents anguish through the words. I know the son thought he was doing the right thing. Being in the healthcare system, he has probably seen the worst. He thought he was protecting loved ones, but he has broken them instead. He never realized the impact it would have on his parents who love him. It is worse than any debt they would have incurred. Their loss is now compounded. Just awful. I pray they find him.

Gee, I thought the USA was the only industrialized country on earth to have a de facto criminal health care policy. Looks like I was wrong.

Sounds like a healthcare approach the GOP would embrace: make yourself disappear before burdening anyone.

Aside from the telling story about healthcare, this is also a story about values. This is a culture that still values "filial piety" as it is referred to. A recent study in the US found that young people valued action on behalf of themselves and their own well being more highly than action on behalf of others and also expected that their parents would agree. (A partner survey of the parents indicated they valued action on behalf of others more highly.) I can't imagine this me-first culture producing people who would make such a decision.

This story tears apart my heart. When I grew up in the 1980s Korea had useless health insurance covering about nothing when big diseases such as cancer hit patients. My aunt had only child who burnt his body badly. She had to sell her own house to raise money for his treatment. She always said to me at the time there were so many medical treatments not covered by health insurance. In the 1980 Korea’s health insurance could be helpful when you visited hospital for cold. However it was absolutely useless for cancel treatment. Now things have changed, we have National Health Insurance which covers any major treatments. When my mother suffer heart disease, I agreed to send her a University hospital and I paid all the money. The cost was about tens of thousands dollars for major hear surgery. But I paid just several thousands dollars and the rest was covered by National Health Insurance. My mother is still with me today. National health insurance can be a great boon for many ordinary people. I hope Chinese people also choose a wise policy.

I went to Union Medical school Hospital, a Beijing hospital built over 100 years ago not by a Chinese but rather as a gift from a foreigner, John D, Rockefeller, as China’s first modern hospital. As I entered, on the floor were roosters and people sitting with their pets, dogs, cats, small pigs. I was told to go around to the foreigner side, separate from the clinic that served Chinese. In the doctor’s room there were none of the things I experienced while working in my father’s medical practice … the smell of alcohol, numerous medical tools, and medical books. This worried me. I had an ingrown toenail, and the doctor said he would cut into my toe and remove the nail. I asked him in Chinese, “um, have you ever done this before?” He jumped out of his chair and paced back and forth, shouting that I was nothing but a foreigner, bred from an inferior race, what am I even doing in China, and who am I to question him? I thanked him for his time, crossed the street to the pharmacy and solved my own problem by putting iodine in the nail groove every day for two weeks.

The police tell this poor couple they cannot help to track their sons phone because of "privacy reasons" in a communist country where the State watches literally everyone? Give me a break! Many Chinese are simply jaded- what is one missing or dead Chinese person in a country with a BILLION of them? This is terrible, Bernie Sanders has finally found a country that has a healthcare system more cruel and heartless than America's. Congrats.

Oh? But isn't China a Communist society? And haven't we all been told endlessly that one of the advantages of Communism is that it provides free medical care to all? There seems to be a slight disconnect here.

Health insurance thats only good as long as you don't get sick

Such a sad story. The ironies abound - (a) Whatever happens to the "socialist" side of Chinese government or ideology of the communist party. There is nothing about "share the wealth" (as most Americans hate communism for), it's all about bootstrap, ie. if you can make it, that's great, but if you don't, don't make a big fuss and just go quietly. (b) For all the glory of One Belt, One Road. China has much wealth to buy influence around the world, but it's all on the backs of its people (when they don't even realize it). (c) For all the outrage that people feel about it, particularly those in the West, of how this young man and his poor family could not have afforded any treatment, are our healthcare system really THAT much more superior than the chinese? We might still pride ourselves with, God bless us, Medicare/Medicaid but it's a ticking time bomb when the money has to come from somewhere. Is it really that much of a rarity that we hear of financial ruins as a result of health issues/emergencies? I don't think so. (d) The saddest part of the story, is a family that has no one to turn to. The son has been a dutiful child, did what was asked of him, and he did well by most account. Whether he's a pharmacist or a doctor, it won't matter in the end. He's an only child and he's dying (or might have been dead). The parents will die destitute with no one to care for them. And they won't even warrant a footnote in the rush to economic prosperity.

What a tragic story. My heart breaks for these Chinese parents and their beloved son. Access to healthcare should be universal human right.

Expensive insurance that doesn’t provide much coverage. Has a familiar ring to it.

This is heartbreaking. But all the more concerning is the pervasiveness of this rather extreme interpretation of filial piety especially among the Asian countries. Perhaps I’m being too cynical but I really hope anyone launching crowd-funding campaigns for this couple will actually wire the money to them. For what it’s worth China doesn’t appear to be on gofundme ‘s list of supported countries.

I read this article on my way to work, and I am move so much that I am full of tears, because I know if I or any of my family had cancer, we would face the same situation as the Tangs. My parents worked their whole life for our family, so that my sister and I can live a better life. I am from a rural area of Southeast China and now working in Beijing as a law clerk. Several years ago my uncle got lung cancer and he just waited for his final moment on his bed. Now my grandma got tumor and waiting for the final test results. My aunt told me that grandma decided not to take medications because the family are now financially burdened by the my house loan. Starting to work now. Prayers for the Tangs.

China has been struggling to improve rural health care since the Cultural Revolution made it a priority. Mao's comments on the situation at the time are amusing and accurate, “Tell the Ministry of Public Health that it only works for fifteen percent of the total population and that fifteen percent is mainly composed of urban gentlemen while the broad masses of the peasants get no medical treatment: they don't have any doctors and they don't have any medicine. The Ministry is not a Ministry of Public Health for the people, so why not change its name to the Ministry of Urban Health, of Gentlemen's Health, or even to the Ministry of Urban Gentlemen's Health? "The methods of medical examination and treatment currently used by hospitals are not at all appropriate for the countryside and the way doctors are trained benefit the cities exclusively, though five hundred million of us are peasants. Medical education must be reformed. It will be enough to give three years’ training to graduates from higher primary schools who can then study and raise their proficiency through practice. If such barefoot doctors are sent to the countryside–even if they haven't much talent–they will be better than the current quacks and witch doctors and the villagers can afford to keep them”. The overall health policy is sound, however: Chinese life expectancy will surpass ours in 2021.

From what I've read, the authorities in China don't give a hoot about the privacy rights of anyone they think is expressing views that are contrary to the views of the ruling Communist Party. So his parents should report their son to be a dissident, agitator, traitor, American spy, protest leader, or neo-revolutionary, and voila, he'll be found right away.

My son was diagnosed with BPDCN, a rare form of leukemia. Since it is so rare there are very few studies of it in children. But I did come across a paper regarding a child in China, which basically said that treatment was effective, but eventually the parents could not afford the cost of medicine and their daughter died. I know cancer medicine and treatment is expensive. I am very fortunate my wife has good insurance. But I know many other parents rely on GofundMe, donors, and family and friends even in the US for assistance. In this regard the US isn’t far from China.

I am a physician and was touring China in October 2012. While at the Wuhan (population 10 million) airport, I felt faint and broke out in a cold sweat. The airport Medic sent me via ambulance to Wuhan University Hospital ER. Our tour guide stayed with me to translate and said I was at the best hospital in Wuhan getting VIP care as a foreign visitor. I was on a gurney next to other Chinese patients and observed their medical care. Families arrived at the ER by private car or taxi, not by ambulance and literally dragged or carried their sick family member from the entrance to the registration desk. They had wads of paper currency in their hands because the ER would not do anything without prepayment. None had insurance. I had shaking chills, cramping, nausea, and vomiting. I had an IV at an inadequate flow rate, a brief exam, blood drawn, and an EKG. I reviewed the test results. The staff did not have a diagnosis. It became clear as my symptoms progressed that I had an bacterial or viral gastroenteritis. When they wanted to do a head CT scan to rule out brain tumor, I refused and told our tour guide to get me out of the ER immediately. I went to a hotel, stayed overnight, and self medicated with the travel medications that I had in my luggage. After a rough night with trips to and from the bathroom, I was fit enough to fly to Shanghai to catch up with the tour. My Chinese companions on adjacent gurneys weren't so lucky. I hope they survived the Chinese Healthcare System.

Can we open a GoFundMe account for these folks?

The "Winnie The Pooh" dictatorship has $BILLIONS to spend on fake islands, aircraft carriers and thousands of missiles to bully the free Chinese on Taiwan, while millions of gifted Chinese children suffer from poor quality education in inland regions. The general population eating toxic food, breathing polluted air certainly would not dare swim in China's polluted rivers and when they develop terrible diseases as a result of government neglect and negligence can expect equally substandard healthcare UNLESS they are part of the Communist Party elite.