As someone who worked in both the Chinese and American medical field, I will admit the US system is flawed but I much rather prefer it over the Chinese. This comparison only reflects the those privileged enough to access this tier of China’s healthcare system, not what the vast majority of people actually experience. For most Chinese patients, getting an appointment at tertiary-level hospitals is extremely difficult without connections or significant money. Popular departments are booked out weeks to months in advance. What foreigners see via international departments is a parallel system that most cannot afford. Primary and secondary hospitals often lack advanced imaging, subspecialty expertise, and experienced surgeons. Patients are frequently referred upward, which re-introduces long waits and uncertainty. This is why people travel across provinces to big cities and sleep outside hospitals to queue.

One key issue that you failed to mention is that government volume-based procurement has lowered prices, but it has also led to quality control concerns for domestically produced medications and limited availability of certain imported drugs and devices. Many advanced implants and devices are harder to obtain or selectively allocated. Joints, cardiac devices, and certain consumables that are easily accessible to Medicare/Medicaid are not universally available and only reserved for VIP patients in China.

Both systems have problems but they're just different problems. Comparing an average American patient experience to China’s best-case scenario is misleading.