Scalped: At China's creaking hospitals, illegal ticket touts defy crackdown

China Resources Medical Holdings

12/04/2016 24:00

* 'Scalpers' buy up appointment tickets, re-sell at high fee 
    * Practice has stirred public anger, prompted crackdown 
    * Beijing police say over 240 scalpers detained this year 
    * But officials, doctors say issue hard to "cure" 
    * Headache for China in drive to reform nation's healthcare 
 
    By Adam Jourdan 
    BEIJING/SHANGHAI, April 12 (Reuters) - As day breaks, 
hundreds of patients wait to see doctors in a queue that snakes 
around the Peking Union hospital in Beijing. Many will wait in 
vain - "scalpers" like Yu Wei have already illegally bought and 
sold appointment tickets for the day ahead. 
    Yu, 32, makes a living touting the tickets that Chinese 
hospitals sell in advance for consultations. His tickets will 
get a patient in front of a doctor in two days, he says, 
compared with a wait that can be up to a fortnight. 
    Dodging passing police patrols as part of his daily routine, 
Yu charges 850 yuan ($131) for a "special care" appointment 
ticket - almost three times the face value. He told Reuters he 
keeps 200 yuan from each sale, with the rest of the profit going 
to hospital insiders who he said help him secure the tickets. 
    "The city's upper middle class are always willing to pay 
this amount or even higher - as long as they can get an 
appointment," Yu said, speaking between frequent phone calls 
that he said came from would-be clients. In the background, 
other scalpers competed for custom, shouting out their prices. 
    The street crime casts light on the scale of the challenge 
President Xi Jinping faces as he looks to overhaul a creaking 
and underfunded public health system to deliver on a promise of 
affordable and accessible care for all. 
    In line with this drive, authorities have tried to crack 
down on healthcare corruption and police say they have detained 
some 240 scalpers in Beijing alone this year. Many patients and 
doctors say, though, the time-served practice is just a symptom 
of deeper issues: a dearth of doctors and low salaries meaning 
graft is endemic. 
    "Scalpers are a real headache for us," a spokeswoman for the 
Peking Union hospital surnamed Chen told Reuters by phone. 
"There's a crackdown on them, but it's a hard problem to cure." 
    The spokeswoman added the hospital and its doctors were 
victims of scalpers and were not involved in the practice. 
     
    DOZENS OF SCALPERS 
    A viral video earlier this year of a woman with her sick 
mother raging against scalpers brought a public outcry and calls 
for arrests and tough jail sentences. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3lUF5XXnuw) 
    Authorities have promised to intensify their crackdown. But 
when Reuters visited hospitals in Shanghai and Beijing, dozens 
of scalpers operated in plain sight, loudly offering tickets for 
sale. 
    A spokesman at the Beijing city health department said 
police needed to "strengthen" their efforts, and it would take 
some time to see any real results. China's national health 
ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 
    Feng Jianqi, a police officer involved in leading the 
crackdown on scalpers in Beijing, said the police could not 
resolve the issue alone. Part of the problem was that so many 
patients wanted to see the same doctors, he said. 
    "It's just not realistic to totally eradicate scalpers. It's 
just too hard," he told Reuters by phone. 
    The problem is acute for patients like Cao Dongxian. The 
middle-aged school teacher travelled to Beijing in May last year 
from his home in Shandong province after local doctors refused 
to carry out a risky intestinal cancer operation.  
    State insurance coverage is limited in China, meaning 
patients often have to pay a large part if healthcare costs 
themselves, especially those with major long-term diseases like 
cancer or diabetes. 
    Keen to avoid paying scalpers, Cao spent months queuing in 
hospital lines for repeat tests before doctors eventually said 
his cancer needed an urgent operation. Cao was then told he 
would have to begin queuing again: this time for a hospital bed. 
    "It was October by the time I got to have my operation ... 
more than four months," Cao said. "On top of that your body's in 
pain - it really hurts."  
     
    'MARKET PRICE' 
    In hindsight, Cao said he wished he had gone to scalpers 
straight away. Doctors also appear resigned to the practice, as 
wealth spreads in China and patients accept the reality that 
paying more will bring speedier treatment. 
    "(Basic) appointment fees don't reflect the economic value 
of doctors' skills and experience," said Wu Yuan, an eye doctor 
at the Peking University First Hospital in Beijing. 
    "Scalpers are simply selling the doctor's appointment at a 
price the market is prepared to pay," Wu said. He said the 
practice was routine but that he had no knowledge of any doctor 
involvement in ticket resales. 
    Even as China's hospitals suffer, the broader market for 
drugs and services is a lure for firms like e-commerce giant 
Alibaba Group Holding  BABA.N  and hospital operator Phoenix 
Healthcare  1515.HK , attracted by a wider healthcare bill that 
is set to hit $1.3 trillion by 2020. 
    For patients like Cao or Zhang Pengyu, a 38-year-old realtor 
from the outskirts of Beijing, scalpers are source of 
frustration and anger, but sometimes a necessary evil. 
    He waited unsuccessfully for three nights to see an ear, 
nose and throat doctor at Beijing Tongren Hospital. He finally 
gave in to scalpers, paying 3,000 yuan for a 10-minute 
appointment that should have cost just 200 yuan. 
    "I wanted to queue myself and not pay so much money, but I 
just couldn't wait any more. I didn't have time," said Zhang.  
 
($1 = 6.4707 Chinese yuan renminbi) 
     
 
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China's healthcare M&A boom    http://tmsnrt.rs/209RuMG  
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 (Reporting by SHANGHAI newsroom and Adam Jourdan; Additional 
reporting by Elaine Tan in MANILA and Natalie Thomas in BEIJING; 
Editing by Kenneth Maxwell) 
 ((adam.jourdan@thomsonreuters.com; +86 21 6104 1778; Reuters 
Messaging: adam.jourdan.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 
Keywords: CHINA HEALTHCARE/SCALPERS