Medical-Legal:

 

  Medical malpractice happens everywhere.  Thailand however has some extraordinary obsticles regarding legal proceedings by foreigners.:

 

(1) social-cultural bias and complexity of initiating police action against the cause medical physician or medical facillity.  These have been strongly reinforced by the medical profession as a self-protection; physicians, clinics, and hospitals often initiate a countersuit for defamation. 

 

(2) Procuring a lawyer /barrister for a medical-lawsuit, there is an adversion

to legal attacking a medical provider. The physicians' view is that they will always try to do their best, unfortunately, most are not well-trained for what they market.  Thailand has lower ratios of doctors to public than any of the

surrounding asean countries.

 

(3) Certain guarantees that judication will be neither expedient nor unbiased nor worth time/expense.  Cases often drag on for years before being judicated; they Courts then often declare that the statutes of limitations negates the suit, or that the suit should not have been filed in their Court.

 

(4) Initiation of a grievence via police for action, if approved, usually cancels later petition for judication. In most cases, all reports with thai metropolitan police are usually inaccurate, altered to avoid involvement, or incrimination or defammation of the medical provider....and in the majority of cases filed and forgotten. Actively pressuring the Thai Police for misgovernance or malfeseance will often result in the Police threatening the foreign litigant.

 

(5) Social and Legal bias against foreign veractiy.

 

For the Thai medical provider, there exists

(1) an unfounded fear that a foreign patient is more likely to make police complaint and/or

(2) a  foreigner is unable to secure healthcare at a reasonable price or

(3) procedures available to thai patients are unavailable to a foreigner. 

(4) Judicial favortism to  thai medical-social hierarchy.

(5) Thai laws are based mostly on archaic family civil law structures; all others are based on ancient Khmer-dervied brahminism which renders the government unassailable and the penalties as overly severe.  The veneers of westernization of thai laws is misleading, parts of British and German laws have been borrowed, but interestingly from the application of German law

in South African apparheit and British law to colonizing India. The legal system in practice is not modern and what is written is not necessarily what will be followed.

 

   The balance is that some thai medical / healthcare services can competent and most will usually render any additional services to patient satisfaction without added charge. Trust and clear contracting is required to proceed fairly and clearly. There is a clear distinction of better and uniform dental services to foreigners.  The use of technology ie. lasers is pervasive in skin asethetics and not well regulated or uniformly trained.