Jul 24 2008
Lion on Medical Leave
There has been a lack of updates for the past few days as I have fallen sick. Measured a temperature of 38.5°C the other day along with the standard running nose, cough and sore throat.
It is quite amazing how fast medical inflation has come along - a 5 minute consultation at a GP near my house costs me a grand total of $54 including the medicine.
My cough seems to be getting worse, so I will be making another trip to the doctor this afternoon. Getting sick in Singapore can be a pretty costly affair.
Normal blog updates should be expected to resume next week.
For a common ailment, $54 is way too expensive! Unless it’s a family physician, but then again, a close family doctor wouldn’t charge this kind of outrageous fees…
Hi Rhin,
Yes, the price of $54 was a bit too high for my liking. I had to ask them to repeat the price a couple of times because I thought my ears were playing tricks on me.
My subsequent visit to my family doctor (located near town area) costs me only $30.
You can still find 5-min consultation for flu / cold at heartland GP clinics for less than $25 easily. So I think the $54 incident is not really representative of medical inflation in itself. From my own experience, hospital charges have largely not grown more than 10% in the last 5 years.