The Cost of Medical Care in Bali

TBone made a comment in my last post on healthcare about receiving an $80,000+ bill for medical care her husband received.

It made me think of a quick and instructive (somewhat related) story:

The fam and I were traveling in Bali and scheduled to go scuba diving on a wreck off a remote region of the island. We arrived the night before and stayed in a “cabin” (read: shack) on the beach near the dive center. The next morning, I woke up, went outside to watch the sun rise and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my left side. Having felt this before, I immediately knew - kidney stone! The pain escalated quickly, and before I knew it, I was throwing up and writhing in agony. Mrs. Wypoxic and our son found some locals who literally fireman carried me into a vehicle and, with family in tow, drove us to the nearest medical center - 2 hours away.

The facility was new, gleaming and spotlessly clean. They took me in, put me in a bed, confirmed it was a kidney stone, gave me some drugs and left me in my stuporous pain to - hopefully - pass the stone at some point. Several hours later, I got up, went to the bathroom, urinated and passed the damn thing. It was an instant relief, and I was immediately ready to go on with vacation.

All that was left was to wrap up the financial part of the visit. We went to the payment window and I explained that I had both health insurance in the U.S. and travel insurance with medical coverage. Language-barrier issues ensued, but eventually they made us understand that we had to pay on the spot - no insurance (now, I had had a previous kidney stone episode in my hometown where I was the COO of the hospital, and part of my contract stated that any care I received there was paid for by the hospital. Nonetheless, I did see the bill for several outpatient procedures and my ER visit and it came to over $70,000). So there was no way I could pay with cash or a credit card at the facility in Bali. NFW.

We didn’t know what to do but asked for the bill. I was stunned to see a charge for over 1.5 million Thai bhat. 1,500,000! We were screwed. And then we did the math. At the time, The Thai bhat was valued at about 22,000 to $1 U.S. A quick calculation came up with a total bill of around… $70. We laughed, gave them a credit card, got the receipt and high-tailed it back to the beach to enjoy the rest of our trip.

If Indonesia (where Bali is located) can provide quality medical care in a gleaming new facility for roughly 1/1000th the cost of care at a U.S. hospital, we are doing something very wrong here in the good ole US of A.