by andyinasia » Thu Dec 06, 2012 9:21 pm
Chuangt2u wrote:andyinasia wrote: I'm posting from a hospital - brought the wife in with a complaint; turns out she has a tumor. So we're offered two options for the course of treatment. One is 50% more expensive than the other. Naturally I want information on the merits of both. No, cannot. Tell us which one you choose, THEN we'll explain the procedure in detail . Blimey!
Go to a different hospital, and best of luck with the Mrs.
I'm being inundated with PMs, which is very moving but I don't have time to respond to all of them now that I'm busy working and nursing, but I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all who have expressed concerns.
Before I comment further on the pricing, I'll briefly fill you all in to save you asking further. My wife started to experience some strange minor symptoms which she suspected were similar to the early symptoms her father experienced. He ignored his for 3 months and when he informed us and we got him to hospital it turned out a tumor had grown malignant and he was past the point of no return. So I took the wife to a local reputable Chinese hospital yesterday and, without knowing her father's history, immediately diagnosed a tumor in its early stage. We just waited half an hour for them to prepare the equipment and she had the operation immediately. There were no complications and she just needs to go through a routine after-care for 7 - 10 days. We're told there should be no long-term effects and she'll be 100% soon.
By the way, Chinese doctors - there's a cultural experience. Rather in keeping with their national stereotype, the do a very efficient job, but are no too hot on patient care - he just blatantly lied to my missus to shut her up: "Will it hurt?" "No". "Are you going to cut it out with that?" "No".
The aftercare involves about 4 hours a day on drips as well as daily checks. Today she was listening to other ladies on the ward who've just had identical procedures. Given the topic of this thread you might find this surprising. I'll tell you now that we were quoted $400 for the basic operation (inclusive of all aftercare and medicines), or $600 for the deluxe edition with the machine that goes 'ping' (sorry, Python reference there). I won't repeat what I reported yesterday, but I opted for the cheaper job. It seems that the other patients and their partners were deemed to look more naive or desperate than us and were convinced to take the $600 tools. Some negotiated down to $500, others paid the full $600.
The only other expenses were the initial $2 to register at the hospital and $27 for the full set of tests - even there, others were charged $37 for the same tests.
Thus you can see there is no fixed pricing, and it seems prices are determined by what the hospital thinks it can screw out of the patient, depending on how vulnerable they look. However, there is no racial element, no 'barang surplus'. I don't think they saw me rocking up in my Tico and assessed me as piss-poor; I think it was due to hard-headed negotiating even in the face of the patient with a serious medical problem.
Now, I didn't want to drag my wife around a dozen hospitals to compare prices, so we may have been ripped off, but I am inclined to say $429 to remove a tumor that was allegedly a week away from going carcinogenic, plus between 30-40 hours of aftercare attention is a price I didn't mind paying.
So, to sum up. The thread topic is about negotiating prices. Many posters here are of the opinion that prices are inflated on the basis that the customer is a whitey. I'm saying that that's myopic - prices are flexible depending on what the seller thinks the buyer will pay. Yes, they may think the whitey will pay more - either he's deemed rich or stupid, or both. However, they will apply the same criteria to Khmers and anybody else. Consequently, in my opinion, a white person can get exactly the same price as a hard-nosed Khmer person if they put in the requisite effort to learn negotiating skills.
[quote="Chuangt2u"][quote="andyinasia"] I'm posting from a hospital - brought the wife in with a complaint; turns out she has a tumor. So we're offered two options for the course of treatment. One is 50% more expensive than the other. Naturally I want information on the merits of both. No, cannot. Tell us which one you choose, THEN we'll explain the procedure in detail . Blimey![/quote]
Go to a different hospital, and best of luck with the Mrs.[/quote]
I'm being inundated with PMs, which is very moving but I don't have time to respond to all of them now that I'm busy working and nursing, but I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all who have expressed concerns.
Before I comment further on the pricing, I'll briefly fill you all in to save you asking further. My wife started to experience some strange minor symptoms which she suspected were similar to the early symptoms her father experienced. He ignored his for 3 months and when he informed us and we got him to hospital it turned out a tumor had grown malignant and he was past the point of no return. So I took the wife to a local reputable Chinese hospital yesterday and, without knowing her father's history, immediately diagnosed a tumor in its early stage. We just waited half an hour for them to prepare the equipment and she had the operation immediately. There were no complications and she just needs to go through a routine after-care for 7 - 10 days. We're told there should be no long-term effects and she'll be 100% soon.
By the way, Chinese doctors - there's a cultural experience. Rather in keeping with their national stereotype, the do a very efficient job, but are no too hot on patient care - he just blatantly lied to my missus to shut her up: "Will it hurt?" "No". "Are you going to cut it out with that?" "No".
The aftercare involves about 4 hours a day on drips as well as daily checks. Today she was listening to other ladies on the ward who've just had identical procedures. Given the topic of this thread you might find this surprising. I'll tell you now that we were quoted $400 for the basic operation (inclusive of all aftercare and medicines), or $600 for the deluxe edition with the machine that goes 'ping' (sorry, Python reference there). I won't repeat what I reported yesterday, but I opted for the cheaper job. It seems that the other patients and their partners were deemed to look more naive or desperate than us and were convinced to take the $600 tools. Some negotiated down to $500, others paid the full $600.
The only other expenses were the initial $2 to register at the hospital and $27 for the full set of tests - even there, others were charged $37 for the same tests.
Thus you can see there is no fixed pricing, and it seems prices are determined by what the hospital thinks it can screw out of the patient, depending on how vulnerable they look. However, there is no racial element, no 'barang surplus'. I don't think they saw me rocking up in my Tico and assessed me as piss-poor; I think it was due to hard-headed negotiating even in the face of the patient with a serious medical problem.
Now, I didn't want to drag my wife around a dozen hospitals to compare prices, so we may have been ripped off, but I am inclined to say $429 to remove a tumor that was allegedly a week away from going carcinogenic, plus between 30-40 hours of aftercare attention is a price I didn't mind paying.
So, to sum up. The thread topic is about negotiating prices. Many posters here are of the opinion that prices are inflated on the basis that the customer is a whitey. I'm saying that that's myopic - prices are flexible depending on what the seller thinks the buyer will pay. Yes, they may think the whitey will pay more - either he's deemed rich or stupid, or both. However, they will apply the same criteria to Khmers and anybody else. Consequently, in my opinion, a white person can get exactly the same price as a hard-nosed Khmer person if they put in the requisite effort to learn negotiating skills.