The Social Face of Economic Growth

Abstract

EVEN AS CONGRESS PREPARES TO DEBATE PRESIDENT Obama’s health reform agenda, the People’s Republic of China has passed its own long-awaited health reform plan, setting aside $124 billion for this purpose over the next 3 years. This ambitious reform, issued by the State Council and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party at the beginning of April 2009, would overhaul the health system, providing citizens with improved service quality, greater accessibility, lower cost burdens, and the guarantee of universal health coverage. China’s much-noted economic trajectory over the past decades has lifted 400 million individuals out of poverty and contributed to what a former World Bank president called “the greatest increase in wealth for the largest number of people in the shortest time in the history of mankind.” China is now the world’s third largest economic power, and its spending decisions could help determine the course of the global economy. However, China’s economic ascendency has brought major challenges. Increasing demand has strained dated drug supply and delivery systems while highlighting increasing financial and health gaps between affluent urban dwellers and their poorer rural counterparts. Meanwhile, rapid development has generated greater threats to the public’s health. The density and intermingling of human and animal populations have led to the spread of infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, AIDS, and influenza A(H5N1). Rapid urbanization has led to changing diets, sedentary lifestyles, and new environmental health hazards. Diabetes will have doubled in China and cardiovascular death will have nearly tripled in the first part of this century. China is home to one-third of the world’s smokers and obesity rates are increasing more rapidly than in any other country in the world.