>Isn't your wife a physician, though? Perhaps you are better served than many.; -)

She is, but she's not practicing. IOW, she does anything but, which includes a lot of reading and trying out things. She's had good results with acupuncture, lately with herbs - mostly for cosmetics and treating burns. She's come to some conclusions (I wouldn't get into details as I don't want to get into a flame war with a billion dollar campaign) - the net result being that we're healthy and it costs us almost nothing. Actually there is a price: total rejection of the health system (or remainders thereof) here, or the health industry while we were there.

>But apart from that, can you give us a thumbnail sketch of healthcare provision in Serbia in 2014? I've not had the privilege of visiting, but colleagues describe a perception of corruption and focus on prevention in an environment of scarcity. Fair?

Life isn't fair... As I said, I had zero contact with the health system here. I'm not paying any and not taking anything from them, so I don't know. They (i.e. parts of the system) used to be my customers 15 years ago, so I perhaps visited once in a while and had a coffee with them. For the few cases when we needed a doctor's opinion, we went to a private hospital here, paid the full price of consultation (about 15-20€ per 30 minute visit, with doctor's full attention and no interruptions), lab (20€ for blood with about dozen parameters), meds (already wrote about that). Now that may be too expensive for the average underemployed or unemployable citizen here, but then it may be cheaper than the expected bribe at the public hospital. Where, as I've heard, you still have to pay some (I guess single-digit euros, from what I remember) and in many cases may be expected to take a hint and visit that same doctor in the afternoon at his private practice.

Too bad, the system used to work rather well until the nineties, when it was summarily looted, and then never given a chance to recover.

>>>I guess the reason the price here is this and there is that is the first market principle: everything is priced at the highest the market can take.
>
>Sadly that would be it. The US consumers get reamed by big pharma, no question. The argument seems to be that US consumers are reliable payers and it's the only way to justify the huge expense of research if you know there is a pool of good payers at the other end rather than grasping foreigners. ;-)

Every country has the crap it deserves, eh?