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Now to today's Net Check. Crippling hospital bills, over zealous doctors, high priced medicines sound familiar? If healthcare is a hot topic in the U.S. it also is here in China. The latest healthcare controversy to erupt here is focused on the cost of prescription drugs. An here has revealed that medicines in one hospital were being sold to patients for nearly 10 times what it should have cost. One patient was charged more than 30 dollars for one prescription - when it should have set her back a little over four dollars. To put this in context, the average urban monthly salary here is around 600 dollars.
Now this isn't an isolated case. Hospitals often inflate the price of drugs so they can turn an easy profit. There have been numerous cases of pharmaceutical companies bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs. And there's an unwritten rule in many hospitals that doctors give ‘hong bao’ or under the table cash to ensure they get the best treatment.
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BON recently reported on the case of a young girl in the central Chinese province of Shaanxi who had spent over a month in the hospital with nails in her stomach. The question that no one seemed to be able to answer was “who was feeding the child nails?” The child is now out of the hospital, and the police have been called in. But rather than the case coming to a close, the mystery only seems to have deepened. BON’S MATT SCHRADER has more . . .