Americans are Going Abroad to Find Affordable Health Care

[steven johnson]

Patients who retire early and are no longer covered under his former employer's insurance and too young to qualify for Medicare are left with few choices. Affordable health insurance can have steep deductibles of as much as $10,000. To affort semielective health and dental care, some US patients are resorting to medical tourism. At the moment,most medical tourism candidates are uninsured and underinsured people paying their own bills and looking for low-cost alternatives to American care. They are willing to overlook the lack of US medical standards to save money.

At least 85,000 Americans choose to travel abroad for medical procedures each year, according to a recent report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Treatment includes dental implants, hip and knee replacements, heart valve replacements and bypass surgery. The cost of surgery performed overseas can be as little as 20 percent of the price of the same procedure in the United States, according to a recent report by the American Medical Association.

Medical tourism is expected to expand quickly in the coming years because of rising health care costs in the United States, increasing availability of international facilities with United States accreditation, and the fact that insurers and employers are beginning to embrace the practice.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, for example, has started a subsidiary company, Companion Global Healthcare, to offer medical tourism services to individuals and businesses. Hannaford supermarkets in Maine recently added an international option for hip replacements to its health care plan.

At the moment, however, the bulk of medical tourism candidates are uninsured and underinsured people paying their own bills and looking for low-cost alternatives to American care. Medical tourism advocates argue that the quality of care overseas is often equal to or better than that in the United States. Many countries have high success rates, American-trained English-speaking doctors and the newest facilities, often built specifically to attract foreign patients.

Going abroad to find affordable health care

[nxylas]

1. It makes up for all those millions of Canadians who flock here for expensive healthcare

Or so the Freepers keep telling us.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. This is scary ...........

A good friend went to Canada for treatment of a prostate problem. I never knew why he did it, since he was affluent and covered by Medicare and Blue Cross from his business. It never made sense to me for him to go to Canada.

It was more than twenty years ago, he had a surgical procedure there, and a year later, was diagnosed HIV-positive. Yes, he'd had transfusions.

He was a nice man, a good man, a loving husband, father, and grandfather. A successful Manhattan businessman. A member of the board at his synagogue for decades. Beloved in his community. Irv was the kind of guy you liked from the moment you met him, and, for my money, he was one of the nicest people in the world.

He died a terrible, wasting death. AIDS.

So much for going abroad for medical care. I have other friends who have done that - a nurse friend took a trip to the Dominican Republic over the Xmas holiday and had a $5,000 facelift, tummy tuck, and boob job. She looks good, but I still think she's nuts.

[tanyev]

3. We're treating them there so we don't have to treat them here.

x(

[Why Syzygy]

4. And someone said you can't outsource health care!

Ha! Even with this:

Two Trillion Spent on Healthcare Each Year: A Sick Way to Prop Up an Ailing Economy

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 28, 2007.

Between 2001 and 2006, the healthcare sector added 1.7 million jobs while the rest of the economy added none. So how well is the economy really doing?

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/58099/