• spectrums_coherence@piefed.social
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    16 hours ago

    No they don’t. They have state provided health care, supplemented with private options.

    But they are not universal in the sense that (1) not the entire population is covered (although almost everyone is) (2) health care is not close to free for most people.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care_by_country#China

    There is literally a hit movie couple years ago about the difficulty to obtain affordable Imatinib: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Survive

    (Imatinib was later covered by state health care package because of this movie

    • k0e3@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      Damn I had no idea. My in-laws were considering to move to China (they’re originally from HK) and I had assumed it’s because the healthcare/elderly care was better there than in Canada, but maybe not?

      • spectrums_coherence@piefed.social
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        16 hours ago

        I should specify I am referring to mainland China. Hong Kong has a different health care systems, and the health care is usually considered reasonably affordable for residents (could be because people in Hong Kong are generally more wealthy than most of mainland China)

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Hong_Kong

        I want to add China’s healthcare is still reasonably affordable for many people living and working in cities.