As day breaks, hundreds of patients wait to see doctors in a queue that snakes around the Peking Union Hospital in Beijing. Many people 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 get a patient in front of a doctor in two days, he said, 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 (US$131) for a “special care” appointment ticket — almost three times the face value.
Photo: Reuters
He said 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.
Authorities have tried to crack down on healthcare corruption and police say they have detained about 240 scalpers in Beijing this year. However, many patients and doctors say 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 Peking Union Hospital spokeswoman surnamed Chen said. “There is a crackdown on them, but it is a hard problem to cure.”
Chen said the hospital and its doctors are victims of scalpers and were not involved in the practice.
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.
Authorities have promised to intensify their crackdown. However, 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 Department of Health said police needed to “strengthen” their efforts, and it would take some time to see any real results.
The problem is acute for patients such as Cao Dongxian, a middle-aged school teacher, who traveled 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 of healthcare costs themselves, especially those with major long-term diseases such as 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 is in pain — it really hurts.”
Cao said that, in hindsight, 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 is likely to bring speedier treatment.
“[Basic] appointment fees do not 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.
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