Reply To: Overpaid for Scar Treatment because of a Surgery Broker

[Jeet Singh]

Hi Gurowho,

Welcome to the forums. Thanks for sharing your story with us.

How did you find this interpreter?

Did the interpreter say she is a licensed medical facilitator or just a freelancer?

This means they’re registered with the ministry of health, have insurance, a physical office and at least 100,000,000 Korean won of financial capital in their business bank account.

Did you find Bonita clinic on your own or via an interpreter?

It sounds like the treatment at Bonita went well albeit finding out about the hidden fees. But if you are happy with the results and care, and it’s still within your budget, then just chalk this up as lesson learned and try not to worry too much about it. But we know what it feels like to learn later that you could have saved money.

In all honesty, the majority of clinics do not like working with these middle parties, but they feel forced to because of lower than expected local demand. Also, it’s sort of an accepted industry practice that foreign patients pay more than locals. This is due to special taxes for accepting foreign sourced money, costs for clinics to service foreigners such as hiring multilingual staff and meeting regulations to service foreigners. All that makes sense if the clinic is genuinely setup to handle foreign patients. However, a lack of transparency of local pricing and knowing that you are tourist can also be factor in a price increase for both foreign friendly and local only clinics. Paying more than locals is usually the case with many tourists traveling to any tourist hotspot around the world, i.e. overpriced souvenirs.

However you are absolutely correct that split medical fees is illegal if the interpreter is not a licensed medical facilitator and you can report it here.