I trained in a major US West Coast city and had plenty of Chinese colleagues and friends in the neighborhood doing business with Chinese hospitals.

It's much worse than that. More like massively overworked doctors seeing patients in a room where the door is held open by the line of people outside, desparate family members pressing their life savings into doctors' hands, and, if the outcome is bad, hunting the doctors down to kill them.

Stories of clinic rooms separated only by mucus-covered meat-locker curtains. Bribes to get pathology cases read by US pathologists. Dual-appointed Chinese professors in the US, directing trials in China that would never happen in the US.

I never had a discussion with anyone encouraging me to go to China, no one told my about the miracles of Chinese medicine. Horror stories, every, single, time.

Two tier healthcare in China is more like the doctors refuse to do anything for you, or the hospital refuses to admit you.

https://qz.com/1206738/the-death-of-a-chinese-flu-patient-re...

The new yorker has a much more in depth diagnosis of health care in China.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/under-the-knif...

That sounds like Valley Medical here in Si Valley. Ostensibly, they have to "accept everyone" but realistically, they put people on buses and send them elsewhere. Also, there are many specialties with zero appointments available and no waiting list... they require calling up at a certain time like getting Yosemite campgrounds. So much for capitalism and the miracles of being "better" than socialism.

It’s better at extracting value for the shareholders. Not that China is socialist, it looks dead set on combining the worst of capitalism and the worst of central planning.

Unlike U.S., Most good hospitals in China are public, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still expensive with the basic care if someone is in serious situation. More and more people are going towards buying some insurance nowadays.

Sometimes I wonder if universal healthcare works in big countries like U.S., China, India etc,.

> So healthcare in China is two-tier? Excellent care for those with money or connections, and bad care for everyone else?

> As someone living in a country with working universal healthcare

I don't know where you are living, but for example the praised German universal healthcare works exactly the same way - two-tier. Of course it's not bad on universal, but if you have money to go private the difference is obviously there.

Isn't it the same everywhere in the world? My first hand experiences are the US and Thailand and I have also researched quite a bit the medical tourism industry. Although there are some differences, it seems universally the case that most locals have access to public healthcare which is generally bad while those with money (wealthy locals and foreign medical tourists) have access to excellent doctors and facilities.

I know there are people positive on nationalized healthcare in some countries. But then I read about how wait times for medical procedures have reached record highs at hospitals in the UK and that there is now wait-time insurance offered in Canada to pay for trip and treatment in cases where you will be dead before your appointment date arrives.

I don't know that it has ever been different. Or that it ever will be.

Minor medical procedures I think you will find - serious cases get fast tracked.