Medical Tourism - Going Abroad For Affordable Health Care

[Rage for Order]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/27/india.medical.travel/index.html

Sandra Giustina is a 61-year-old uninsured American. For three years she saved her money in hopes of affording heart surgery to correct her atrial fibrillation. "They told me it would be about $175,000, and there was just no way could I come up with that," Giustina said.

So, with a little digging online, she found several high quality hospitals vying for her business, at a fraction of the U.S. cost. Within a month, she was on a plane from her home in Las Vegas, Nevada, to New Delhi, India. Surgeons at Max Hospital fixed her heart for "under $10,000 total, including travel."

Giustina is just one of millions around the world journeying outside their native land for medical treatment, a phenomenon known as "medical tourism." Experts say the trend in global health care has just begun. Next year alone, an estimated 6 million Americans will travel abroad for surgery, according to a 2008 Deloitte study. "Medical care in countries such as India, Thailand and Singapore can cost as little as 10 percent of the cost of comparable care in the United States," the report found.

Companies such as Los Angeles-based Planet Hospital are creating a niche in the service industry as medical travel planners. One guidebook says that more than 200 have sprung up in the last few years. "We find the best possible surgeons and deliver their service to patients safely, affordably and immediately," said Rudy Rupak, president of Planet Hospital. "No one should have to choose between an operation to save their life or going bankrupt."

Lots more at the link

The article does mention some things that people should be concerned about and some questions you should clarify before seeking treatment abroad. For example, what are your legal rights in the event of malpractice? Will the hospital provide you with a copy of your medical records so you can give them to your doctor(s) here in the states? What will be included in post-operative care? What are the certifications of the hospital?

[ddeclue]

1. Translation: Outsourcing the few decently paying jobs left in this country.

Medical, legal, and defense technical jobs are all that is left. This outsources one of those three (where possible) to overseas.

NOT a good solution. Let's get single payer gov't managed healthcare in THIS country instead of going overseas to use someone else's.

[Rage for Order]

2. About that... I found this part of the article interesting

"Some Canadians and Europeans said they chose to travel aboard, despite having national health plans, because they are tired of waiting -- sometimes years -- for treatment."

What good is affordable coverage if it takes you months or years to access it? This is something that will need to be addressed if/when we get single payer in the US. Waiting months for surgery is only mildly more acceptable than not having the surgery due to affordability.

[ddeclue]

3. It still beats NOT being able to get treated at all.

Here in FL, more than 25% of Floridians have no coverage at all right now and the situation is only growing worse by the day due to massive unemployment. I don't see CA and UK's problems as due to single payer systems but as due to a failure to train sufficient medical personnel and open sufficient clinics. Cuba is far poorer than either but has no such problems.

[Rage for Order]

5. Undoubtedly

But I don't think you can say that the single payer systems have nothing at all to do with the shortage of medical personnel. I personally don't mind if a heart or brain surgeon makes $5-$10 million a year because they spend 10-12 years in medical school and residency. They can't begin earning a living (and paying back their humongous student loans) until they're nearly 40 years. However, under a single payer system it's a given that surgeons, doctors, nurses - pretty much everyone in healthcare - will have to take large pay cuts, probably 30% or more. Otherwise the economics won't work. A percentage of the people who practice medicine went into the field for the money, and if the pay isn't as much as it used to be there will be those who decide to pursue a different career path.

Single payer is an idea whose time has come, but it will be a difficult balancing act to pay people enough to continue attracting the best and the brightest while also keeping costs low enough that we don't end up with interminable waiting lists for specialists and surgeries.

[Nay]

7. Remember that under a single payer system, those doctors most

likely will not be paying humongous student loans because training will not cost $400,000. Any single-payer system worth a crap trains its doctors and nurses--it doesn't charge them to go to school. Suitably talented people can go into medicine because they want to and are talented in it.

[dflprincess]

4. Having to wait for elective surgery is better

than not being able to get life saving surgery. It's estimated that 18,000 Americans die prematurely from treatable conditions because they don't have health insurance (and that's a government estimate so you can bet the number is higher).

Yes, in Canada if you need a hip replacement and it's not an emergency you may have to wait for it for months, but in the U.S. you will wait until you die if you don't have insurance. And you'll be lucky if you can afford the pain meds you'll need to live with your bad hip.

[nashville_brook]

6. i've had to wait months in life altering pain to see a rheumatologist, and i had

about the best insurance you can wish for.


these supposedly scary stories about Europeans "waiting" for treatment just don't impress me either.