Five-star, hotel-like hospitals, which can now be found in most of the larger Indonesian cities, exploit a need for better medical care without always fulfilling that need.
Their elaborately decorated public spaces provide an illusion of medical competence not necessarily reflected in what happens to the patient. From my own direct observation, what these five-star hospitals are most adept at is using powerful legal teams to ruthlessly extract payment for medical services rendered.
It would be interesting to know how many families have lost their homes following the legal actions of these hospital’s accounts departments. Here in Batam, I once saw a foreign tourist who suffered a heart attack after being attacked and robbed of all his belongings. Some public-minded citizens bought him to one of Batam’s “better” hospitals. When, the next morning, that hospital found out that the tourist had lost all means to pay, he was immediately removed from life support and unceremoniously dumped back at his hotel; not alone, but in the company of two thug-like men from the hospital’s accounts department who spend the next 48 hours badgering and bullying the sick tourist to find the means to pay the hospital’s bill. (The hotel, ironically, was far more tolerant and humane towards the sick tourist’s predicament than the hospital.)
One reason why Prita Mulyasari’s case has such an outpouring of public support is that too many of us have suffered at the hands of Indonesia’s corporatized profit-oriented medical services industry. The professional standards and moral aims of health care in this country need more, not less, open debate and public scrutiny.
Evan Jones
Batam, Riau Island
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