I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know why those doctors were wearing masks.
James H. Boren




As a foreigner in Ukraine I have made many incorrect assumptions based upon my experiences living in America. I assumed that my shower would always have hot water, I assumed that supermarkets would sell peanut butter, and I assumed that healthcare would be very expensive.

My first trip to a Ukrainian hospital was one that I will never forget. I was in the Carpathian Mountains skiing and snowboarding with a group of friends from America, Russia, and Ukraine. When engaged in athletic activities at high altitude like skiing, it is highly advisable to drink a lot of water. Otherwise, you can quickly become dehydrated.

Normally I would abide by this rule. However, up in the mountains in the middle of winter it was very cold, so I didn’t feel like I was becoming dehydrated. I am used to drinking water for free from the tap in America, but being in a foreign country, I refrained from consuming the local water. Also, the bottled water that they sold in our hotel was a strange kind of mineral water with a very bitter taste, so I had no desire to drink very much of it. All of these factors, combined with the high altitude and rigorous exercise, created a dangerous situation for my health.

After a full day of skiing and snowboarding, walking through the mountains, and site-seeing through the town, our Russian and Ukrainian friends invited us to go to the sauna. This was my final mistake. Whatever water and electrolytes I had remaining in my body after all of the rigorous exercise that day was washed away in the sauna sweat.

The next day I felt terrible and I couldn’t keep any liquids in my body. I knew that I was dehydrated. I tried to rest and drink lots of water and juice, but I wasn’t recovering fast enough. We had to take a train to Moscow the next day, and I needed to recover before then. I was going to have to do something that I had feared since the day I had arrived in Ukraine: I was going to have to go to a Ukrainian hospital.

Why was I worried about going to a hospital in Ukraine? Because I assumed that the costs would be similar to the costs in the US. In America, a visit to the hospital is very expensive. It can cost over $100 for a simple visit and consultation to any doctor. A trip to the emergency room, where I would need to go in order to get saline solution injected into my veins to help my dehydration, could cost $1000 or more.

At 3 in the morning, just hours before our train to Moscow, I was taken to the hospital in a quiet Carpathian town. The doctors were all asleep, and the head nurse examined me. She didn’t think anything was wrong with me, and in fact I believe she thought that I was drunk, since the symptoms of dehydration and drunkenness are very similar, and drunkenness is not only common in Ukraine, it is practically a national pastime. I knew, however, that I was in fact dehydrated and that I desperately needed some saline solution in order to survive my 36 hour train ride.

The nurse woke up a doctor who also thought that I was drunk, but after a lengthy and confusing discussion, (I spoke no Russian at the time), he finally agreed to give me the saline solution. You can imagine my horror when, thinking that a brief visit to an American Emergency room would cost me a minimum of $1000, the doctor turned on all the lights in the small hospital, took me into the operating room, and woke up the other five doctors and nurses who worked there. Here I was simply in need of saline solution, but they had awoken the entire hospital staff. In America, each doctor that examines you will charge you a different amount, so I was imagining 5 different medical bills, and I was thinking that this little treatment would probably cost me thousands of dollars.

The treatment was good and fast, and I was soon on my way home. But before I left, I handed the doctor my US Medical Insurance Card to prepare for what I believed would be an enormous payment. In America, you pay hundreds of dollars every month to a medical insurance company, which helps pay the hospitals for your visits. This decreases the costs of medical visits and procedures, but you have to pay in advance, just like with car insurance. Without medical insurance, no one in America would be able to afford our extremely expensive healthcare costs.

The Ukrainian doctor simply looked at my medical insurance card and laughed. I was worried that this might mean that he wouldn’t be able to use the card and that I would have to pay the full price, which I was certain would be $1000 or more. He wrote something on a piece of paper and said “20 grevens”. I was shocked. They had woken up the entire hospital, turned on all the lights, injected me with three or four bottles of saline solution, observed me for over an hour, and the cost would only be the equivalent of about 4 dollars. I didn’t know what to say. I was so grateful that I started handing money to all the doctors. Certainly they deserved more than 20 grevens for more than an hour’s work at 3 in the morning.

I must say that I was never happier to be in Ukraine than at that moment. Good healthcare at an incredibly cheap price relieved many of my concerns about living in this country. Of course, the well trained doctors deserve much better salaries than what they earn now, but for the common people, there is nothing better than knowing that in the case of an emergency, it will not kill you financially to get better physically.