Here's How You Do It

I would like to point out an article where the author has really succeeded in painting a picture of misery. This report is something the YLE writers should take a long hard look at - they might learn a trick or two.

The gist of it is that China's health care system isn't really working and that it's too expensive for most poor people, especially in rural areas, to afford necessary medical care. This is fine; from there the article goes on to explain what steps the Chinese government has decided on to improve the situation.

Then the article moves on to the human interest half, and oh boy have they got a beauty for us. Gillian Wong and Xi Yue tell of a family whose daughter suffered from a neurological disorder but was kicked out of the hospital (and dropped from a ventilator) because her parents couldn't afford the hospital bills. The girl was then made a makeshift machine from bicycle parts and an old washing machine while the family gathered donations and borrowed money, which in the end totaled 160.000 yuan, her father's salary being 1000/month.

There's also a short story about a group of migrant workers buying a secondhand dialysis machine and using it themselves when they couldn't afford a proper hospital. Somewhere in the between they report how 70 recommended hospitalization never happens as the people can't afford it.

This is how you write a scary hospital story. They couldn't just do a human interest piece and a separate report on what the government plans for the health care improvements but at least it beats the hell out of the YLE report where they published stories of people complaining about the Swine Flu.

The AP article titled "China Tries to Fix Crumbling Health Care System" is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091130/ap_on_re_as/as_china_fixing_health_care