Returning from ten days out of town, I took my phone off call-forwarding, unpacked, and prepared to drive to Trader Joe’s for groceries. Before I left, the phone rang with a housecall at the Torrance Marriott, twenty miles distant. The good news was that it was Saturday evening, so freeway traffic was light, and the patient was seventeen, an age when illnesses are rarely complicated. The bad news was that he was Japanese, a people admirable in every respect except for their reluctance to learn English.

As I stepped out of the elevator, a middle-aged Japanese man rose from a chair. “Are you the doctor for the hotel?” he said.

I was delighted. “Yes. Are you going to interpret for me?”

He stepped back in alarm and waved his English-Japanese phrase book. Hiding my disappointment, I followed him to the room. When he began flipping through the booklet, I shook my head and pointed to the phone before dialing the guest’s Japanese insurance service for an interpreter. There followed a lengthy encounter as the phone passed back and forth between me, the parents, and the patient. The young man had suddenly complained of fatigue the previous day. He was otherwise in good health; he had no other symptoms, and I found nothing abnormal on examination. Sudden fatigue is an ominous sign in the elderly but rarely in an adolescent. I suspected an emotional problem, perhaps from the stress of travel. This is hard to explain across both language and culture, made even harder because I didn’t give a medicine. Giving medicine is a universal language; that’s why doctors prescribe even when it isn’t necessary.

Luckily these were Japanese, so they listened to my advice (get a good night’s sleep, continue with their itinerary, call if the problem persisted) with unfailing courtesy, nodding approval, and thanking me effusively as I left.

Can I Submit This to My Insurance?

The phone rang at 9:30 a.m., the perfect time. I was finishing breakfast. My routine is to work an hour on the computer and then go to the gym, but I’m happy to do a housecall instead. If two housecalls arrive, I skip the gym, an even greater pleasure.

The hotel was the Holiday Inn at the airport. The patient, a young Australian woman, had arrived after a tiresome flight during which she was forced to run back and forth to the bathroom. Urine infections are among my favorite diseases. They’re miserable but respond quickly to the antibiotics I carry. Patients are always grateful. This looked like a good visit. I quoted my fee.

“Oh… I didn’t realize it would be so much.”

This happens now and then. I remember guests at the Beverly Hills Hotel where room rates start at $300 who didn’t want to pay half that. In any case, once I mention the fee, I try not to refuse someone who thinks it’s too high. So I asked if $100 was OK. It was.

It was a satisfying visit. I tested her urine, announced she had an infection, and handed over a packet of pills. She was grateful. As I left, she indicated my receipt.

“Can I submit this to my insurance?”

“You have travel insurance?”

“I think so. They made us buy something for this trip.”

It was too late to ask why, if she had insurance, she had objected to my fee. But this happens regularly. In every advanced country outside the US, except Russia, China, and South Africa, if you need a doctor, you don’t first decide if you can afford it, so foreign tourists often pay little attention to their insurance.