Offline: What Adam Smith can (and cannot) teach China

摘要

"Our goal is to improve the social role of doctors and to make their income higher than the average", pledged Li Bin, China's Minister of Health, last week. The authority she quoted for her statement? Adam Smith, who argued that doctors' "reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires". And, referring to the recent scandal over allegations of corruption by GlaxoSmithKline, she made her government's position clear: "We should handle corruption in a very firm manner. We must cut it out like a tumour in a patient."