Free Doctor Consultation on May 20th
Indonesian Doctor Association (IDI) is doing their public service by not charging anything for doctor consultation on May 20th, the national awakening day, across Indonesia. There will be two ways of doing it on that day:
1. Free consultation fee for the have not
2. Normal fee for the haves and the proceed of the day is donated to IDI for the next social services, such as free cleft lip surgery for those who needed.
It's an awesome thing to do, as doctors in Indonesia are a bit like taxi drivers, if they are not working at their private practices, they dont earn anything that day. Unlike their European counterparts who dont need to have their own practices because their salary is high enough, the salary of Indonesian doctors is very low for that kind of expertise & responsibility so they need to supplemented their earning by having private practices. Mind you, not many people in other profession is willing to forsake their earning for a day like that. Imagine if you are a GP, I think in Jakarta you charged about Rp 100,000 per patient, and if you are working for a clinic/hospital, you still need to give them their cut up to 20%. If you have about 40 patients for the whole day, your opportunity cost is Rp 3,200,000. However, if you are a well known specialist who charged at least Rp 250,000, then your opportunity costs is Rp. 8,000,000.
Yes, you might say that they are doctors who supposed to help people and expected to help people. Sure, doctors are supposed to be more altruistic than other profession, but it doesnt mean other profession couldnt help other people as well. Say, tax advisor, they could've given 1 day of their fees and use the proceed to set up an foundation funding students learning to become a tax advisors or something like that. Imagine the amount of fund we could generate in days like this, and if the disbursement of it accurate, how many things could improve.
Anyway, please spread the news, so that those who need to see a doctor but cant afford it know about this service.
1 comment:
It's sympathetic, it's generous ( and it definitely is a blessing to a number of individuals), but unfortunately it hardly solves any structural healthcare problem.
As the old hardcore socialist I am, I think the right thing to do is to develop a mandatory general health insurance, like the one our crazy people in charge are in the process of systematically abolishing.
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