Another revolution coming in China

Tens of millions of people aren't covered by any health insurance, and millions who had insurance have lost it as a result of the global economic crisis.

Despite the rise in health care spending, the population isn't getting any healthier. Infant mortality rates have stopped declining. Diseases once under control have re-emerged.

Too many people live in fear that they're only one illness away from poverty.

Yep, things sure are bad . . . in China. So bad that, in January, the Beijing government announced a plan to spend $124 billion by 2011 to provide some form of health insurance to 90% of the population.

That's a huge amount of money. Yes, the dollars being thrown around in our own health care debate are larger: The draft bill being debated in the Senate Finance Committee carried a price tag of $856 billion when introduced. But that would be the cost for 10 years.

The Chinese price tag of $124 billion for two years is impressively large when you consider that China is still a relatively poor country. U.S. gross domestic product hit $14.3 trillion in 2008, estimates the CIA World Factbook. The factbook puts the size of China's economy at $4.4 trillion, using the official exchange rate, or $7 trillion at what's called purchasing power parity. (Purchasing power parity attempts to adjust official figures to take into account what people in different countries actually pay for the same goods and services.)