Finally in April of last year, when his family was away, Zheng took a small fruit knife and a saw to his own legs. He chomped down on a towel wrapped around a backscratcher. He cut off his left foot at the ankle and severed his right leg at the thigh....
Horror stories like Zheng's keep making the headlines on the mainland, exposing gaps in the country's health safety net, even as authorities trumpet the health care reforms that have provided 95 per cent of the population some basic health insurance....
November 12, 2013
"Chinese farmer saws off his own legs as insurance will not cover medical costs."
"Zheng Yanliang spent much of the last 18 months sitting in a wheelchair in his Hebei farmhouse, a sheet concealing his ruined legs. His mother could not bear to look at the protruding bones...."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
27 comments:
The lad may not have legs, but he has a pair of big brass ones
If full bore communists can't deliver healthcare what makes anyone one think small c communists a/k/a the Democratic Party will do a better job of it? Comming soon to a theater near you.
Coming to a hospital near you.
Thanks Obama!!
Note to self:
Step 1: Wash fruit knife very carefully.
Step 2: ....
Okay guys, straight-up historical question here: Did the Chinese Communist government ever (e.g under Mao) offer completely covered health services to the peasants?
I think not; that they only had traveling physicians & nurses, kind of like traveling circuit court judges. But, honestly, I don't know. Anyone here know about this history?
Thomas Friedman: "This guy can really cut it."
They actually have insurance now? You've come a long way, Baby!
I still like the story out of either Ozland or the Kiwis of the guy who had the gangrened finger and cut it off with scissors because he was denied medical aid for another 6 months.
oww, Oww, OWW!!! I can't stop cringing.
I once removed some dental work with a mirror and a pair of pliers because I was too far from my dentist. I'll still brag about it, but, inside, I know it doesn't mean much.
He forgot to nail his balls to the street while he was at it.
YoungHegelian said...
"Did the Chinese Communist government ever (e.g under Mao) offer completely covered health services to the peasants?"
Silly question. In Mao's China, there were no sick people that could not be cured with home made herbal teas. Anyone else could be taken care of by bare-foot doctors. Their health care system was as good as Castro's. The communist officials took R&R in air-conditioned rooms upstairs. Other silly buggers lied around in cots in hallways, next to toilets. Water closets were closets with a squat down toilet and a bucket of water next to it. But then Mao's China was a third world country.
Don't worry, our healthcare system is getting as good as Mao's. We need to grow some herbs though.
Why, it's almost like "health insurance" is not "health care".
In a one party system, Who takes the blame.
I mean, there's no republicans to blame are there?
By the way, when travel in China, don't get into an accident without a wad of cash or soup up travel insurance. Their emergency operations are pre-paid with cash, their needles are re-usable. Oh, that wad of cash would better be in the possession of someone who was not involved in the accident, else it would disappear before the ambulance arrived.
At least he has the assurance of high quality Mao statuettes in his future.
“China is making investments in the future, they’re making investments in clean energy, they’re making investments in infrastructure…we used to have the best infrastructure in the world…had the best roads, the best airports, the best ports, the best highways, the best internet service, now we’re second, we’re third, we’re fifteenth, we’re twenty-first, we can’t win that way...Barack Obama
Well, one can perhaps see the government's logic: "We've got plenty of people, so why spend to fix the damaged ones?"
Or something.
That is because he bought a substandard policy sold by one of the few bad apple insurers. If onely he waited he could have gotten a new upgraded policy on Obamacare.gov which not only would have covered the leg issues but also given him free maternity care and thrown in a sex change operation for free.
Well, comrades. If you like your legs you can keep your legs.
Single Payer Now !!!
Well, comrades. If you like your legs you can keep your legs.
Only if they are not substandard, junk legs, and they haven't changed an iota since the grandfathered legs regulations were effective.
They're making investments in infrastructure. Didn't 15 relatively new bridges collapse w/in 5-10 years of being built?
OTOH, when you come from a country with so little infrastructure, it's easy to invest in it.
When I was there, we were told they only had 4 highways. We saw men working on them with pick axes. Ahhh, that's called full employment!
I don't know, Anthony, would the free breast pump really help him?
He's being followed by a Moon Shadow... Moon Shadow, Moon Shadow.
You have to feel sorry for the sap who needs to work the system for his personal benefit yet is simply a pawn of the government. Hey, wait..
So that's Chinese Obamacare!
And they have death panels to!
No, that's Maobamacare. Meet the new health plan, same as the old health plan.
We don't get fooled again! (Unfortunately, however, the LIVs will, and there are more of them than there are of us) :-(
Yeah there's that vaunted socialist health care!
Post a Comment