在中国，想见自己刚出生的孩子需要付多少钱？
中国广州——朱莉安娜·布兰迪·洛戈博(Juliana Brandy Logbo)本月在中国一家医院进行了紧急剖腹产手术，生下了一对双胞胎。她本以为最糟糕的部分已经结束了。但次日，院方开始催她交钱。
First, Logbo said, the hospital told her that she had to pay $630 in hospitalization fees if she wanted to see her girls. Three days later, she said, the amount rose to nearly $800.
洛戈博称，医院一开始跟她说，要想见到自己的女儿，她必须支付630美元的住院费。三天后，她表示该费用涨到了将近800美元。
She didn’t have the money. The demands left her weeping outside the newborn department in the hospital.
她没有那么多钱。这些要求令她只能在医院的新生儿室外哭泣。
“I want to get my kids discharged because I need to breast-feed them,” said Logbo, a 28-year-old Liberian living in Guangzhou. “I gave birth to my babies, and I can’t even see my babies. Which type of country am I in?”
“我想让我的孩子们出院，因为我需要给她们母乳喂养，”洛戈博说，28岁的她是一名住在广州的利比里亚人。“我生了孩子，却不能哪怕是见见自己的孩子。我是在一个什么国家?”
In most developed countries, patients who need urgent care are given it first, regardless of whether they can pay. That isn’t always the case in China.
在大多数发达国家，需要紧急救护的患者会首先得到援助，不论他们是否能够支付。在中国却并非总是如此。
Logbo is living in China on an expired visa and can’t speak Chinese. But her experience mirrors that of millions of Chinese people who have to put up with an inflexible health care system that sometimes requires patients to pay upfront for treatment.
在中国生活的洛戈博签证已经过期，也不会说中文。但她的经历与数百万中国人类似，他们不得不忍受僵化的医疗保健制度，患者有时必须先付费才能得到治疗。
China has rolled out an ambitious $130 billion package designed to make medical care more affordable. It now has almost universal health insurance for its nearly 1.4 billion people.
中国已经在实施一项1300亿美元的宏大计划，旨在减少医疗保健负担。该国近14亿人已经接近实现全民医保。
But the system is still plagued with gaps in coverage. Depending on the disease, whether the person lives in a city or the country and other factors, many Chinese can face huge out-of-pocket costs.
但这个体制仍然在覆盖面上存在漏洞。根据疾病不同、一个人住在城市还是农村或者其他因素，许多中国人可能会面临高昂的自付费用。
Then there are the remnants of the country’s “pay as you go” system. People who can’t cough up the money are often denied care — even in life-or-death situations. Some hospitals require patients with particular diseases to pay a hefty deposit first.
此外，中国还有残存的“现收现付”制度。不能支付这笔费用的人往往无法得到护理——哪怕是生死攸关的情况。一些医院还要求患有特定疾病的病人首先支付一笔可观的押金。
While medical reform was supposed to make health care more accessible, industry analysts say the problem persists. In 2015, for example, national health officials recommended that for critically ill patients, hospitals had to “first save them and then demand payment later.”
尽管医改本应让医疗保健更加方便，但该行业的分析人士表示问题依然存在。比如在2015年，国家卫生官员建议，对于危重患者，医院必须“先救人，后收钱”。
New parents are vulnerable, according to Chinese state media reports.
根据中国官方媒体的报道，新生儿父母格外容易受此影响。
In 2012, a couple in Shenzhen were denied access to their newborn twins for two months because they could not pay nearly $19,000 in fees. In 2011, a 57-year-old grandmother in Nanjing, whose son owed a hospital $2,800 in medical fees for his newborn, knelt and begged doctors and nurses to allow him to see his child. That same year, a hospital in Dongguan told the parents who owed it more than $1,600 that it had sent their newborn child to an orphanage in order to “frighten” them into paying. While the families inevitably get their babies back, hospital officials can use their demands for faster or fuller payment.
2012年，深圳一对夫妻因为无法支付将近19000美元的费用，连续两个月无法接触他们新出生的双胞胎。2011年，南京一位57岁的奶奶由于儿子欠医院2800美元医药费，跪地乞求医生和护士允许自己见见孩子。同年，东莞一家医院告知一对欠了医院1600多美元的父母，他们已经把新生儿送到了孤儿院，以此“恐吓”他们付款。家人最终都能要回孩子，但院方会利用这一点要求更快或更完整地收到费用。
Rebecca Taylor, an Australian breast-feeding counselor in Beijing, called Logbo’s case “a ginormous violation of human rights.” She added that separating Logbo from her babies could be “almost catastrophic” in terms of breast-milk production.
驻北京的澳大利亚母乳喂养咨询师丽贝卡·泰勒(Rebecca Taylor)称洛戈博事件是对“人权的极大侵犯”。她还说，使洛戈博和自己的孩子分离，对母乳的产生来说可能是“灾难性的”。
“I’m saddened, disappointed and horrified, but I’m not surprised,” Taylor said. “If anybody goes to a local hospital for anything, everybody knows you have to go to the ATM first to carry a fistful of cash. You will literally not get things without paying.”
“我感到伤心、失望和害怕，但我并不意外，”泰勒说。“在当地要去医院做点什么，谁都知道你得先去ATM机取一大把现金。不付钱你真的什么都得不到。”
Logbo acknowledged that her situation complicated matters. Her boyfriend, also a Liberian and the father of her twins, has been detained in China since September, she said, accused of lending his Chinese bank account to a friend for a money transfer.
洛戈博承认，她的处境使事态更为复杂。她说，同为利比里亚人的男友，也就是双胞胎的父亲，因为把他的中国银行账户借给了一个朋友用于转账，从9月起就被拘留在中国。
At the Huadu District People’s Hospital in Guangzhou, the demands for money came early. On May 5, as Logbo was going into labor, she had to pay $130 for an “ambulance fee.” After her C-section the next day, she had to pay a $790 deposit.
在广州市花都区人民医院，催缴通知格外早一些。在5月5日洛戈博准备生产时，她须支付130美元的“救护车费用”。第二天在进行了剖腹产后，她要支付一笔790美元的押金。
Logbo gave birth at 3 a.m., and the nurses whisked the twins away without letting her hold them. When she asked to see her girls the next day, administrators demanded a $630 discharge fee, she said. 洛戈博于凌晨3点生产，然后护士很快便带走了双胞胎，没有让她抱。她说，当她第二天要求见自己的女儿时，管理人员要求她支付630美元的出院费用。
Her friend Salome Sweetgaye helped her raise the money, but they were too late. On May 10, they were told that they had to pay $800, according to Logbo. Logbo told the hospital that she had no money. It reduced the price to $707. Copies of these bills were viewed by The New York Times.
她的朋友萨洛姆·斯威特盖耶(Salome Sweetgaye)帮她筹到了这笔钱，但为时已晚。据洛戈博称，5月10日，她们被告知需支付800美元。洛戈博告诉医院自己没钱。医院将费用减至707美元。《纽约时报》查验了这些账单的副本。
That afternoon, Logbo held her babies for the first time.
那天下午，洛戈博第一次抱到了自己的孩子。
A woman surnamed Tang, who works in the hospital’s medical disputes department, challenged Logbo’s account. “There definitely isn’t this situation of demanding that she first pay up before letting her see her children,” said Tang, who declined to give her full name. She said hospital workers had merely been “reminding” Logbo to pay up.
该医院一位在医疗纠纷部门工作的唐姓女子对洛戈博的说法提出了异议。“绝对不会是要她先交了钱才能去看小孩的这种情况，”拒绝提供全名的唐女士说。她表示，医院工作人员仅仅是在“提醒”洛戈博付钱。
Tang said Logbo’s babies were premature and could not be taken out of the newborn department. Many Chinese hospitals have a policy of denying parents access to premature babies because of a lack of nurses to monitor the visit and a fear of infections.
唐女士称，洛戈博的孩子是早产儿，不能被带出早产儿科室。中国许多医院都有这种拒绝父母接触早产儿的政策，因为没有足够护士对来访进行监管，并且会有感染的可能。
Logbo rejected Tang’s assertions, saying her babies were born healthy at 37 weeks. 洛戈博不接受唐女士的说法，称自己的孩子是在第37周健康生产的。
Sweetgaye, 28, verified her friend’s account and said the hospital was “lying.”
28岁的斯维特盖娅证实了朋友的说法，她还表示，医院在“说谎”。
“They refused to give the babies to Juliana,” Sweetgaye said. “She had to cry a lot.”
“他们拒绝把孩子交给朱莉安娜，”斯维特盖娅说。“她哭了很多次。”
Hospital officials didn’t respond to additional requests for comment.
医院管理者没有回复更多置评请求。
Hospital employees didn’t speak English, so it isn’t clear how much was lost in translation. Employees used smartphone translation apps, Logbo said.
医院员工不会说英语，所以不清楚翻译过程中遗失了多少信息。洛格博称，医院员工使用的是智能手机翻译软件。
But the hospital’s demands were clear, she said. One employee, she said, typed on his phone that she needed to pay 5,000 renminbi — nearly $800 — to get her babies discharged.
但她表示，医院的要求很明确。她说，一名员工在他的手机上打字，写明她需要支付5000元人民币(近800美元)，医院才会让她的孩子们出院。
Logbo and her twins were discharged on May 13 after she paid nearly $3,500 in total, money raised through donations. She named her girls Grace Annabelle and Gracious Anna. (“Because I’m grateful to God for everything.”)
5月13日，洛格博支付了近3500美元，她和双胞胎女儿才被允许出院。那些钱主要是募捐来的。她给女儿们取名为格蕾丝·安娜贝尔(Grace Annabelle)和格拉西娅丝·安娜(Gracious Anna)(“因为我为这一切而感谢上帝”)。
The pay-as-you-go system persists in part because, some doctors say, they get stuck with unpaid bills themselves. Hospitals stress that they are not charities.
一些医生表示，“付账出院”制度持续的原因之一是医院受拖欠的账单困扰。医院强调自己不是慈善机构。
Felicity Miller, a British woman who was working at a factory in China, said a Shanghai hospital refused to give her premature daughter, born in 2011, an injection to prevent her lungs from collapsing because it had not received a deposit of about $1,600. Then, it threatened to withdraw treatment because her insurance company had not given the hospital a deposit of nearly $7,900.
曾在中国一家工厂工作的英国女性费莉西蒂·米勒(Felicity Miller)称，2011年，因为没有收到约1600美元的押金，上海一家医院拒绝给她早产的女儿注射防止肺部衰竭的药物。后来，由于她的保险公司没有向该医院交付近7900美元的押金，该医院威胁要停止治疗。
“They said, ‘If we don’t get the money, we would stop the treatment,'” Miller said in a telephone interview. “And if she stopped the treatment, she would die.”
“他们说，‘如果收不到钱，我们就会停止治疗，’”米勒在接受电话采访时说，“如果停止治疗，她就会死。”
Miller said she left China that year because of her experience.
米勒表示，因为这段经历，她在那一年离开了中国。
“I love China so much,” she said, “but it feels that if things go wrong, it’s not the right place to be.”
“我非常喜欢中国，”她说，“但我感觉，如果出现意外，那里就不适合待了。”
