There is a pressing need for the government to extend effective help to hospitals which have been hit financially by patients who are incapable of paying for their medical treatment, commented an online article of www.peopledaily.com.cn. An excerpt follows:

The prevailing existence of poor patients who cannot afford their medical treatment expenses has caught the hospitals between the devil and the deep blue sea. If they turned down the emergency case for the sake of money, they would be condemned for lack of humanity; if they saved them for the sake of life alone, they would suffer from a grave financial loss.

To save hospitals from a moral degeneration and a financial bankruptcy, the government should be responsible and find a key to this social conundrum.

Responsibilities are reasonably accompanied with corresponding rights. In this sense, when the government vests hospitals with the responsibility to heal the wounded and save the dying, it should also endow them with a reliable guarantee mechanism.

In the medical-treatment-expense-dodger cases, the government should provide a strong financial guarantee, for example, a special relief fund be set up under the name of Ministry of Public Health. Once a hospital is confronted with ungrateful patients, government subsidy will help them out. Such a relief system could be funded by encouraging public or private donations and issuing a social welfare lottery.

Yet it is reasonable for someone to worry about the sudden emergence of more free-loading patients who want to take advantage of the government's benevolence. Therefore, the government and some related institutions should set up laws and regulations to get rid of the possibility of ill-intended-expense-evading. If someone is confirmed evading medical treatment fees purposely, he or she should be severely fined and punished by law.

Only when hospitals are protected from such fraud can they be more capable of saving lives.

(China Daily October 21, 2004)