Pay or die: Doctors in China are profiting from increasing AIDS awareness. “On the day she arrived at the Number Three People’s Hospital to seek treatment for HIV, Cai had no symptoms. But she did have a little bit of money, and that gets quick attention in the modern-day Chinese health care system: The doctors pressured her to check in and begin a regimen of expensive intravenous drugs, warning that the alternative was a swift death, she said.

When she asked for the free anti-AIDS drugs the central government has begun providing to the poor, the doctors rebuffed her, she said, until she agreed to pay for costly tests. And when she ran through her money and all she could borrow — her 45-day hospital stay exceeding $1,400, nearly triple her annual income — the doctors cast her out.”