Ticket scalpers make fortune in nation’s capital
Print Edition
AS day breaks, hundreds of patients wait to see doctors in a queue that snakes around 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 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 (US$130) for a “special care” appointment ticket — almost three times the face value.
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.
The street crime casts light on the scale of the challenge the government faces as it works 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 health care 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,” said a spokeswoman for Peking Union Hospital surnamed Chen.
“There’s a crackdown on them, but it’s a hard problem to cure.”
The hospital and its doctors are victims of scalpers and not involved in the practice, he said, seemingly neglecting to mention the fact that the hospital issues the appointments in the first place.
Authorities have promised to intensify their crackdown. A spokesman for Beijing’s health department said police need to “strengthen” their efforts, and it would take some time to see any real results.
Feng Jianqi, a police officer involved in leading the crackdown on scalpers in Beijing, said 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.
Acute problem
The problem is acute for patients like Cao Dongxian. The middle-aged school teacher 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 health care costs themselves, especially those with major long-term diseases like cancer or diabetes.
Keen to avoid paying scalpers, Cao spen t 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.”
In hindsight, Cao said he wished he had gone to scalpers straight away.
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