A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
A friend and I checked out Columbia Asia International Health Care center yesterday, just in case I come down with Dengue Fever or trip on a curb or something. There are several of these 24 hour clinics aimed at the international community, and this one comes highly recommended and is said to be reasonably priced, not that I have any basis for comparison.

What interested me most was their fee schedule. A Vietnamese person going to a Vietnamese doctor pays the least -- $12 minimum per visit or thereabouts. A non-Vietnamese person going to the same native doctor pays double -- minimum $24. If you want to see a foreign doctor, the Vietnamese person would pay $24 and the expat would pay $36 for a basic visit.

So there's a weird discrimination thing going on in two ways. They charge the non-Vietnamese more for the same service, presumably because they figure they can afford it, and they undervalue the Vietnamese doctors, though I'm not sure if it is due to their training or simply some internalized racism on the part of patients willing to pay more for Western docs. I suspect the latter, and I guess the clinic might as well benefit financially from the biases of the community. I'm told that some of the western doctors at thewse clinics are, in fact, volunteers here for a few weeks or months, which makes their higher fees almost pure profit for the clinics. Well, more power to them if they can get it, I guess. Supply and demand pricing -- capitalism in action in communist Vietnam.

As for me, I figure my most likely reason for a visit to Columbia will be an unfortunate run-in with a motorbike or bicycle. I'm confident that a Vietnamese MD can bandage my wounds and set my multiple fractures every bit as well as an American, French, Swedish or other foreign doctor. Perhaps better, considering the huge volume of street accidents they must see around here. Finally, a perfect justification for me being cheap!

© 2002 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 9:54 PM