Health Care versus Health Scare

There's no need - for a European - to talk about the possibly emerging US health care system - it is something most more or less civilized nations have - and have had for quite a while.
I also know that it would be - given the state of the world we live in - most difficult to change the mind-set of profit driven insurance companies and the medical establishment at large with a bit of Chinese wisdom.


However, I like everyone of my readers to know and consider the following.

In ancient China, way before the idea of communism ever existed, they had an admirably smart system one can only envy! I think it is the best health care system ever conceived. You'd pay your personal physician (GP in modern terms) a certain fee every month as long as you were healthy, as long as she or he kept you advised as to how to stay that way.
However, the very moment you'd fall ill, contract some disease, feel pain here or there ... any payment of yours would be suspended - until, that is, you were well again.
There's nothing or little to praise about modern China ... but the ancients often did have a specifically wise way to look at things.

In our present system, a GP would possibly send his flu carrying kids to school - because contaminating others could perhaps be good for business. The equivalent Chinese GP - a long time ago - would certainly keep them at home ... because it could easily be bad for business.

Street advert in Hongkong, 1981 Copyright © CCRCC

Fruits and vegetables from China? No thanks!

Fuji apples, small tomatoes, broccoletti and strawberries saturated with various poisons and grown under acid rain are on our tables. Food products “Made in China” are now invading us.

Entire plantations of products are cultivated on terrain contaminated by DDT and irrigated with water from basins poisoned by toxic industrial waste and by the water from urban sewage disposals. The plants are treated on a regular basis with phosphate-based pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers, which are both highly carcinogenic, rather than risk any imperfections in the harvest.

Lead, mercury and other poisonous substances go directly form the plants to the stomach. They are then deposited in our internal organs, causing permanent damage.

Together with the Chinese apples and vegetables, they are selling us cancer.

--- Text and Image from UnMade in China

Equally interesting is this: the website which posts this text - and other critical information about China - is often attacked (electronically) and made unreachable. Do you wonder by who? I don't.

--- A note to people on Crete
Beware! The most perfectly big and clean looking cloves of garlic in shops here on the island often are - check the labels where you can - from China!