China: Bioethics, Trust, and the Challenge of the Market

This volume provides a unique perspective on the market reforms currently taking place in Chinese health care. The authors come to grips with the changes taking place in Chinese health care and its effect on the traditional doctor-patient relationship.

to the Moral Challenges H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and Aaron E. Hinkley 1 Taking Finitude Seriously in a Chinese Cultural Context Across the world, health care policy is a moral and political challenge. Few want to die young or to suffer, yet not all the money in the world can deliver physical immortality or a life free of suffering. In addition, health care needs differ. As a result, unless a state coercively forbids those with the desire and means to buy better basic health care to do so, access to medicine will be unequal. No co- try can afford to provide all with the best of care. In countries such as China, there are in addition stark regional differences in the quality and availability of health care, posing additional challenges to public policy-making. Further, in China as elsewhere, the desire to lower morbidity and mortality risks has led to ever more resources being invested in health care. When such investment is supported primarily by funds derived from taxation, an increasing burden is placed on a country's economy. This is particularly the case as in China with its one-child policy, where the proportion of the elderly population consuming health care is rising. Thesepolicychallengesarecompoundedbymoraldiversity. Defacto,humansdo not share one morality. Instead, they rank cardinal human goods and right-making conditions in different orders, often not sharing an af?rmation of the same goods or views of the right.

Provides a unique set of perspectives on health care reform in China Provides contemporary Confucian, other Chinese, and Western perspectives on the perceived difficulties of market reforms in health care Provides an important overview of the health care system in China prior to the market reforms of the 1980s and 90s from Chinese scholars who are familiar with the full range of implications of those policies Provides reflections of contemporary Confucian and other perspectives on the role of trust in the doctor patient relationship

Inhalt
Introduction: Trust, the Market, and Bioethics.- The Bioethics of Trust.- Chinese Health Care Policy: An Introduction to the Moral Challenges.- Health Care Policy in China.- Towards a Confucian Approach to Health Care Allocation in China: A Dynamic Geography.- Trust is the Core of the DoctorPatient Relationship: From the Perspective of Traditional Chinese Medical Ethics.- Medical Resources, the Market, and the Development of Private-Run Hospitals in China.- China, Beware: What American Health Care Has to Learn from Singapore.- Trust, Profit, Scarcity, and Integrity: Confucian Thought and Traditional Morality.- Confucian Trust, Market and Health Care Reform.- The Pursuit of an Efficient, Sustainable Health Care System in China.- A Reconstructionist Confucian Approach to Chinese Health Care.- The Market and Health Care.- Health Care Services, Markets, and the Confucian Moral Tradition: Establishing a Humanistic Health Care Market.- Markets, Trust, and the Nurturing of a Culture of Responsibility: Implications for Health Care Policy in China.- Fostering Professional Virtue in the Market: Reflections on the Challenges Facing Chinese Health Care Reform.- Looking to the Future of China: Can Confucius Guide the Health Care Market?.- On the Reform of Health Care Reform.- Is Singapore's Healthcare System Morally Problematic?.