After being “held hostage” by a Turkish hospital for weeks after becoming unwell while on vacation without insurance, a retired pub proprietor was finally permitted to return home after paying £25,000.
Two days prior to the conclusion of a two-week vacation to Marmaris with his fiancée Jane, 68-year-old Malcolm Stocker, he started experiencing abdominal pain.
Upon his admission to Ahu Hospital, physicians diagnosed pneumonia and placed him in an induced coma with a medical ventilator for two weeks.
However, the hospital insisted that his family pay half of the £49,000 medical cost before they would release their grandpa, even after he had healed.
Having no idea what was going on from day to day had been a living nightmare. The hospital seemed to be making up statistics when they came up with the outrageously high pricing. Malcolm said he doesn’t know how those hospitals get away with charging foreigners five times as much as the regular price.
According to his heartbroken children, the ‘extortionate’ £ 49,000 bill was reduced to £25,000 by hiring a lawyer. The children then started fundraising to cover the remainder of the bill.
After more than 30 days of “hell,” Mr. Stocker is now back home in Exmouth, Devon, thanks to the almost £17,000 he contributed and his family’s payment of the rest of the bill.
Thanking the donors, Emma-Jane Stocker added that her father would still be in Turkey if they hadn’t helped.
Rumors of other foreign patients being forcefully drugged in Turkish hospitals to inflate their medical costs were something Emma-Jane had heard.
Ms. Stocker, a medical secretary, and her 37-year-old sister Kerry-Ann took a plane to visit their father.
She mentioned that the hospital’s personnel was not very good with English and that they were unable to consult with any of his physicians.
His son Lee, a cab driver from Weymouth, was so intent on being there for his dad that he spent six and a half weeks in Turkey with him and his company, Weyline, covering the hotel bill.
