美国西雅图时报网站9月11日刊登Tom Lasseter发自北京的报道，题目是China's gap between health care for the rich and poor remains vast，摘译如下（参考网王会聪译），英语原文附后：

这位虚弱的老太太坐在马扎上盯着人行道，等待着街对面的医院里能腾出一张床位。她拿着一袋子衣物，还有半个西瓜。“太累人了，”她面带怒容地说。71岁的苏启新（音）本来计划上周做胸部手术，但北京协和医院已没有床位。如果她是个有钱人，说不定已花钱弄到床位了。但作为一个山东工人的妻子，苏别无选择，只能在街上坐等，已经两天了。

　　尽管苏不过是京城一角的一个个体，但她的经历让人想到中国庞大经济下的阴影。与发达国家相比，中国普通百姓的生活水平仍远远落后。许多人面临低工资、巨大贫富差距及滋生不满情绪的不完善公共服务体系。

　　据瑞信银行研究，中国最富有和最底层10%的家庭收入相差约26倍。这一差别在首都一流医院内显现无遗。在北京大学第一医院，病人为购买14元的挂号单需排队几个小时。而若花上200元，无需等待就能看上病。在医院里，这种事不足为怪。但对那些只能出得起14元挂号费的病人而言，这种折磨能持续一整天，使他们备感沮丧甚至情绪失控，今年就发生了几起流血冲突。

　　去年中国宣布实施1240亿美元的计划，新建医院、提高医疗补助并在2011年前使90%的公民享受医保。该计划还能刺激经济。对医疗费的担忧及对医疗体系缺乏信心，通常是中国人不肯更多消费的原因。

　　尽管政府多方努力，但上周我们走访3家北京的医院时仍发现两家在排长队，许多人面露愠色。王连玉（音）为给妻子看病已等了6个小时，当时已是下午4时。另一家医院那时已无人排队，但仍有人在为第二天凌晨开始排队挂号做准备。

　　北京的大医院之所以人满为患，一定程度上因为人们不信任小医院或省级医院的设施。这一问题因“号贩子”的出现而变得更严重。协和医院一名工作人员说，该院设计挂号能力为每天接诊2000人，现在不得不面对1万多人，“（每天）都排长队，中国就是这种状况。”▲（王会聪译）

China's gap between health care for the rich and poor remains vast
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
BEIJING - The frail woman sat on a small wooden folding chair, staring at the sidewalk and waiting for a bed to open up at the hospital across the street.
She was carrying a sack of clothes, a ginseng root in a bottle and half a watermelon in a grocery bag. "It's really tiring," she said, looking exasperated.
Su Qixin, 71, was scheduled for breast surgery a week earlier, but the west campus of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital had no room. If she were well-heeled, Su might have bought her way in, but the wife of a factory worker from Shandong province had no choice but to sit on the street for two days, interrupted only by a night in a rundown dormitory.
Although Su Qixin is just one person in a corner of Beijing, her experience is a reminder that in the shadows of China's massive economic clout, the standard of living for ordinary Chinese lags far behind that of developed nations. China is the world's second-largest economy, but many of its 1.3 billion residents face low wages, a massive gap between rich and poor, and dysfunctional public services that breed discontent.
National leaders, obsessed with avoiding any sign of civil unrest, have pledged several times to address those issues. Articles in official media this year have underlined the concern with titles such as "Country's wealth divide past warning level."
World Bank figures show that despite the gains of recent decades, China's gross national per-capita income is $3,620: 124th in the world, above Angola and below Tunisia. In the United States, annual per-capita income is $47,240.
Serious income disparity strains the situation further: The top 10 percent of Chinese households earn about 26 times what the bottom 10 percent earn, according to a study conducted for the Credit Suisse investment bank.
Based on fees
The implications are clear at the capital's leading hospitals.
At Peking University First Hospital, a patient can stand in line for hours to buy a 14-yuan ticket, about $2, to see a doctor. Or a patient can pay 200 yuan, almost $30, and see the same doctor without waiting. Inside the hospital, the experience is relatively calm.
For those who can afford only the $2 tickets, however, the ordeal can last all day, causing anguish and outbursts; several times this year, it has boiled over to bloodshed. A patient who was unhappy with his treatment at a north Beijing hospital slipped back onto the grounds March 10 and stabbed a doctor in the head, chest and back. The doctor died.
The mother of a patient at a west Beijing hospital stabbed a doctor with a fruit knife June 17. The doctor survived with wounds to her hands, thigh and calf.
Chinese media reported this month that a man had pleaded guilty to murder for stabbing another man in the chest at a hospital in southeast Beijing. The two men had been competing for business from reselling hospital-admission tickets.
Police and health officials recently began a campaign to discourage such scalpers. They arrested dozens of people last month, hung bright red signs forbidding the practice and set up crowd-control systems outside hospital entrances.
The Chinese government last year announced a $124 billion plan to build hospitals, boost health-care subsidies and provide insurance to at least 90 percent of Chinese citizens by 2011. There's also an economic spinoff. Fears about the cost of health care and a lack of confidence in the system are frequently cited reasons for the reluctance of Chinese to buy more goods and services.
Unhappy patients
For all the official efforts, though, recent visits to three Beijing hospitals found lines at two of them and plenty of unhappy people.
Wang Lianyu, for example, had been standing outside the east campus of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital for six hours for a chance to get an appointment for his wife. It was 4 p.m. Wednesday. The ticket window wasn't scheduled to open until 6:45 a.m. the next day.
Wang's wife, a 62-year-old in need of gallbladder surgery, was waiting on a bench nearby.
"I think it's very unreasonable," Wang Lianyu said.
A man standing beside him, Zhang Xianfeng, was with his 22-year-old son, who has a potassium deficiency. They, too, had been there since morning and were planning to spend the night camping out. "I have no better way of doing this," Zhang said.
Before he or Wang could explain further, a man walked up - apparently plainclothes security - and began interrupting the interview by loudly proclaiming in English that Chinese health care was superior to that of the United States. Two security officers in uniform soon followed and asked the reporter to leave.
At the third location, Peking University First Hospital, there was no line, but one was expected to start forming after midnight to get ready for the next day's ticket sales.
The crowds grow at big hospitals in Beijing partly because people at times don't trust the doctors at small or provincial facilities, said Liu Xue, a professor at Peking University who teaches strategic management in the health economics and management department.
The problem is made worse by ticket sellers, a phenomenon - fueled by cheap labor in China - that makes it possible to pay someone to stand all day for a few dollars, he said.
"This situation is common in other fields, though it is cruel to have it applied in the medical field," Liu said.
Attempts to interview officials from the three hospitals visited were unsuccessful.
A woman who answered the phone at the joint press office of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital explained that locations designed to handle 2,000 visitors a day have to deal with more than 10,000. The woman, who wouldn't give her name, said no one was available for an interview.
"There is a long line, and that is just the situation of China," she said before hanging up.