On the day when Congress finally passes the long awaited Healthcare Reform Bill, I just have to speak on this issue from this side of the Pacific.
You can probably relate: You're in a foreign country, either travelling or living, and you get sick. Oh no! the last thing you want to do is go see a doctor. You don't know how clean the hospitals are. There might be foreign bugs there that you're not immune to. Will they use proper sterilization methods? Will they use anesthetics? Will your insurance cover it? Will the doctor even see you? Will you understand each other? Are they up-to-date in methods and technology? Can you trust the drugs? And on and on.
I've always been wary of seeking medical care in Korea. It's difficult enough to negotiate your way in a foreign country, but I reserve a special sense of foreboding when it comes to handing over the care of my body. And it's not just me. The Koreans I know in Canada don't trust the Canadian medical system, and my own uncle who has lived in the US for more than twenty years still sees his Korean dentist on his regular visits to Korea.
So when we first arrived in Korea two months ago, I was reluctant to go see a doctor even though Lucien was obviously sick. He had a cold. He was coughing. His breathing was phlegmy, his eyes were goopy and his nose was running. Plus he was running a fever. I kept hoping he would get better on his own. It was just a cold, right? But the landlady insisted, and practically dragged me by the hand to a nearby clinic.
So we went, without an appointment and without insurance. I grabbed a wad of cash on the way out. After all, I had spent $200 on one visit to the pediatrician in Los Angeles when I took Lucien to see Dr. Fleiss (yes, THE Dr. Fleiss of Heidi Fleiss fame - you LA folks will know who I mean - and also of Mothering's "People We Love" fame). I took about the same amount with me this time.
We walked a few blocks and up a flight of dirty stairs to a reassuringly clean office. I explained to the receptionist/nurse that I didn't have insurance or even an id. number (everyone has this, it's like a social security number), so she took down Lucien's name and told me to take a seat. I waited all of ... five minutes, at most ten.
The doctor was sitting in front of her computer. She asked some questions, checked Lucien's breathing and heartbeat, looked in his throat, cleared his nose with a huge suction machine, asked some more questions, then typed in a prescription. That was it. The whole visit took about ten minutes.
Then back out to the receptionist who printed out the prescription and -- here's the big important part -- charged me about $10 for the visit. I couldn't believe it. That's it? I thought I heard wrong. I pulled out a fraction of the cash I had on me and handed it to her, waiting for her to correct me. No. That was correct.
Ok, you might argue, sure it's $10, Korea's a third world country and the doctor was using rusty instruments and machines that were 30 years old. But no. The machines were really impressive and ... kind of comic, to be honest. This big honking machine sitting behind the doctor, with all these tubes and metal parts poking out of it, and a powerful humming whenever she turned it on...never seen one in North America. Not sure what it was for, other than suctioning snot out of Lucien's nose. And of course, Korea is not a third world country but one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.
So then I was left wondering, why is it so cheap? Or maybe I should rephrase the question: why is it so formidably expensive in America? And, why is it so cumbersome in America and Canada? It was just so easy to see the doctor in Korea.
While I was there, a few people came stumbling in, an old lady complaining of a pain in her leg, and a man with a child who had - he believed - swallowed a toy. His wife insisted the child had swallowed something, could they just take a quick x-ray and check? Now can you imagine someone just stopping in at the doctor's because her leg was bothering her? No appointment, just stopping by on her way somewhere else. Or someone rushing over for a "quick x-ray" to check, just in case, because their child might have swallowed something. It just seemed so effortless and efficient.
It's not all rosy and golden, though. My only complaint is that it is very perfunctory (though I'm used to that from my visits in Canada), and they love to prescribe drugs drugs and more drugs. For Lucien we picked up three different vials of pink medicine, as well as five sachets of powder, to be administered three times a day in different quantities for five days. None of them were labelled so I didn't know what any of them were (now I know to ask). One of them was an antibiotic, and it must have been a pretty powerful one because it did quite a number on his poor digestive system. I never saw such terrible diaper rash, for which the doctor prescribed a whole new cocktail of drugs.
There is a hospital right next door to us, and I went for a few visits to specialists. Cost? $16. Less than $20. Crowded, but the wait was never long.
Hopefully, as the U.S. reshapes the way it takes care of its people's health, some streamlining of costs will occur. Surely, if Korea can do it....?
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