The Great Singapore Ripoff

Medical Tourism and the Dr Susan Lim Saga

With overcharging specialists like Dr Susan Lim and some members of her fraternity saying doctors can, when warranted, charge up to S$300,000 a day in fees, Singapore can well forget about emerging as the healthcare destination for those in need of medical attention.

Dr Lim, who has become a symbol of extreme greed, has been in the news the last few days for the exorbitant charges she extracted from the Brunei royal family for treating a breast cancer patient from that household for around four years.

The family paid all the multi-million-dollar bills as long as the patient was alive. But after the patient’s death in 2007, Dr Lim produced a bill for S$24 million for five months of treatment. Brunei still was ready to pay up if it was offered a good discount. Later, however, it decided to bring it up with the Singapore Health Ministry.

The amount was not just astronomical by any stretch of imagination but was loaded with fraud. (For instance, when she brought in a specialist outside of her domain, he charged less than S$1,000. But she produced a bill of more than S$300,000 for the Brunei royal family.

I think this involves a combination of greed, criminality and stupidity. How can she assume that anyone will meet all her sky-high charges without a murmur even if it is one of the world’s richest people (Sultan of Brunei) picking up the bills?

Dr Susan Lim argues that she and the patient had agreed on a payment of S100,000 to $200,000 a day. This is weak reasoning. The agreement notwithstanding, the fact remains that the amount is atrocious.

Even the world’s best surgeons only charge a fraction of that amount. For instance, when she herself brought a top breast cancer surgeon from Europe to treat the same Brunei patient, his charge was only £15,000 a day for three days. Dr Lim then produced a bill for $320,000 for “emergency long-distance coordination.”

To me, the case is more than one involving a disciplinary issue. It is one that has criminal import, with fraudulent overcharging and markups. While Singapore is trying to become a medical hub, doctors like her can do lasting damage to the country’s ambitions.

Incidentally, Dr Lim is known as the first surgeon to have performed a successful liver transplant in 1990. More on that at http://www.susanlimsurgery.com/dr_susan_lim.html

 –G Joslin Vethakumar