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'White-gowned angels' lose their wings
By Tian Yi (Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-06 09:05 The following story surely
makes a promising candidate for the Most Absurd Story of the Year.
Weng Wenhui, a retired school teacher in Heilongjiang Province, was sent to
the 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University for malignant lymphoma
on June 1. He stayed in the intensive care unit for 66 days, and when he died on
August 6, his family received a medical bill totalling 1.397 million yuan
(US$175,000).
Let's break down this 1.40 million yuan a bit.
Weng received 94 blood transfusions, in other words, 9,400 milliliters of
blood which was double the blood capacity of a normal person, in a single day on
July 30. At least this is what his medical record says.
On July 31, he received 106 bottles of drip infusion, 20 bottles of glucose
infusion, and 10,000 milliliters of blood transfusion. Again, on his medical
records.
The blood transfusion alone cost him 22,197 yuan, by the way.
On August 8, he was on a phlegm sampling test. This one may sound reasonable,
except that he had been dead for two days.
The list goes on and on but these are enough for us to figure out where the
1.40 million bill came from.
Other than the outrageous bill, the hospital required Weng's family to buy
medicines from other channels for emergency use, which cost them another 4.1
million.
The family said that they are now seriously doubtful how the hospital used
these medicines.
According to last Thursday's National Business Daily, an investigation team
sent by the central government has started working on the case.
I was shocked again by how greedy our "white-gowned angels" can be. By again
I mean I had come across another similar case the day before I read about this
story. The medical bill didn't look so overwhelming in that story, but the
doctors were just as despicable.
It was about how doctors at a local hospital in Shanghai diagnosed a pregnant
woman and her husband to be infertile. The two doctors bluffed them into
believing they had serious sexually transmitted infections.
Despite the different types of alleged infections, the doctors sent them to
get the same treatment.
The couple quit the treatment on the fifth day 錕斤拷 the doctors told them that
the treatment might not work but only after they had spent over 37,000 yuan,
mostly borrowed from relatives and friends.
Here is the "best" part of the story: The wife was later found to have been
pregnant during her treatment. The couple now have to decide whether they should
keep the long-awaited baby or not 錕斤拷 it's not known yet what effects the
medicines the woman took will have on the unborn child.
Some people say the unsuccessful Medicare reform should be held responsible
for the wanton misbehavior of some doctors and that it's too harsh to blame it
all on doctors.
But isn't there a line that all doctors must not cross under any
circumstance?
When some of them go out of control and turn into blood-suckers, or even
potential baby-killers, they deserve to be the objects of legal punishment and
moral censure.
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