20/06/2025
WHY SOME DOCTORS BILL MORE THAN OTHERS
Title: “Just Five Minutes?”
Mila stormed out of the clinic, clutching the white prescription paper in her hand and shaking her head in disbelief. “Five minutes. I paid ₱800 for five minutes,” she muttered, eyes wide with exasperation.
She sat on the nearest bench and began venting to her husband over the phone.
“Alam mo, he just asked me three questions — ‘Saan masakit? Kailan nagsimula? May lagnat ka ba?’ Then he listened to my back, looked at my throat, and wrote this! That was it. I didn’t even get to finish explaining everything I googled!”
On the other end of the line, her husband tried to calm her down. “Baka naman magaling ‘yung doctor?”
“Magaling? E ni hindi ako tinanong tungkol sa diet ko o lifestyle,” Mila snapped. “I could’ve done that myself.”
What Mila didn’t see — and what many never do — was the unseen work behind that “five-minute” consult.
The doctor had reviewed her chart the night before, recognizing her name from previous visits. His years of internal medicine practice told him which symptoms pointed to something serious and which ones didn’t. He noticed her breathing pattern as she walked in, the slight hoarseness in her voice, the subtle wince when she shifted in her seat.
He asked the right questions, examined the right places, and gave the right treatment — not because he was rushing, but because he had trained for decades to be that precise.
What took him five minutes took him twenty years to master.
And that’s what many patients don’t understand: you're not just paying for time — you're paying for expertise.
That’s also why some doctors bill more than others. It’s not just the title "doctor" that sets the fee, but how much they’ve invested in their training, their subspecialty, their experience, and the accuracy and safety they can offer in return. A more experienced doctor can often make the right call faster, with fewer tests and fewer errors — and that kind of efficiency isn’t cheap.
Mila’s ₱800 paid for more than five minutes. It paid for the confidence that she didn’t need an unnecessary lab, or a wrong medicine, or a week of worrying. It paid for a quick diagnosis made with precision — the kind only possible through long years of study, failures, learning, and patient care.
Sometimes, the best doctors make it look easy.
That’s the cost — and the value — of true medical expertise.
