- Target:
- The Honorable Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
- Region:
- GLOBAL
We, the undersigned, appreciate the healthcare reform challenge that you and the President are currently faced with. As we are sure you realize, America is not the only country that is having trouble providing adequate healthcare to its people.
China also sorely needs a better healthcare system. We urge you to present your ideas regarding healthcare reform to the Chinese government, so that the idea of universal healthcare may one day be truly universal.
Approximately one-half of the urban population of China has health insurance. Sadly, this is the best news. Most of China’s public health resources are concentrated in the major cities, leaving the rural population seemingly forgotten. As urban healthcare improves, rural healthcare is dissolving. A short time ago, rural China had universal, if basic, healthcare.
Seventy-nine percent of the population of rural China, by China’s own statistics, is uninsured. Very few are able to obtain sufficient treatment, if any treatment at all. This leaves many to suffer and die in their own homes. In severe cases, the mentally ill are imprisoned in iron cages within their homes, to prevent them from doing harm to others because they cannot afford hospitalization. While China is attempting to develop a basic insurance plan, the annual fee – which is little over one dollar – is said by many peasants to be too high.
In signing this petition, we hope to bring China’s healthcare crisis into light, and demonstrate the various aspects of this crisis, which are similar to America’s own healthcare problems. Once again, we urge you to persuade the Chinese government to reform their failing healthcare system as we reform our own.
Please consider the lives of China’s working poor in addition to the lives of America’s working poor. As world leaders, China and the United States can work together to solve our shared healthcare crises and pave the way for other nations.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Universal Healthcare for China petition to The Honorable Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State was written by Michaela Kane and is in the category Health at GoPetition.