One of the commonest medical stories you get in this country is of a family desperately raising money so a loved one can be sent abroad for treatment. Enough said.
That's not uncommon here either. Although not always that easy to manage.
With an estimated 45 million uninsured Americans, some 500,000 trekked overseas last year for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. Asian hospitals in Thailand, India and Singapore have long been swarmed by medical tourists looking for tummy tucks and face lifts, but many glitzy, marble-floored facilities are now gaining reputations for big-ticket procedures including heart surgery, knee and back operations.
More and more patients like Gilmore — who had never held a passport or even tasted Indian food before her trip — are returning home and spreading the word about an alternative to America’s ailing health system. Businesses, insurance companies and even a state lawmaker are now also starting to eye the potential savings of outsourcing health from the world’s richest country to the developing world.
“It’s just one of the many ways in which our world is flattening,” said Arnold Milstein, chief physician at New York-based Mercer Health & Benefits, who’s researching the feasibility of outsourcing medical care for three Fortune 500 corporations. “Many companies see it as a natural extension of the competition they’ve faced in other aspects of their business.”
Some American hospitals already rely on places like India for X-ray readings and other diagnostics, while also importing foreign doctors and nurses. But the U.S. health care industry has been largely immune to overseas competition — just one reason behind soaring costs.
Medical tourism” was valued at about $439 billion last year in a new report by Visa and Oxford Economics, which projected that it could grow 25 percent a year over the next decade. This year, an estimated 1.4 million Americans will leave the country for a medical procedure, according to Patients Beyond Borders.
In addition to traveling in order to save money, some medical tourists plan trips because they want to have a treatment that’s not approved in the United States or because they’ll have a shorter wait by going abroad.
A lot of people go to Costa Rica for their dentist and arthritis. And I know people who travel to the UK for heart surgery.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2017-07-30 06:19 pm (UTC)That's not uncommon here either. Although not always that easy to manage.
With an estimated 45 million uninsured Americans, some 500,000 trekked overseas last year for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. Asian hospitals in Thailand, India and Singapore have long been swarmed by medical tourists looking for tummy tucks and face lifts, but many glitzy, marble-floored facilities are now gaining reputations for big-ticket procedures including heart surgery, knee and back operations.
More and more patients like Gilmore — who had never held a passport or even tasted Indian food before her trip — are returning home and spreading the word about an alternative to America’s ailing health system. Businesses, insurance companies and even a state lawmaker are now also starting to eye the potential savings of outsourcing health from the world’s richest country to the developing world.
“It’s just one of the many ways in which our world is flattening,” said Arnold Milstein, chief physician at New York-based Mercer Health & Benefits, who’s researching the feasibility of outsourcing medical care for three Fortune 500 corporations. “Many companies see it as a natural extension of the competition they’ve faced in other aspects of their business.”
Some American hospitals already rely on places like India for X-ray readings and other diagnostics, while also importing foreign doctors and nurses. But the U.S. health care industry has been largely immune to overseas competition — just one reason behind soaring costs.
- http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15513596/ns/health-health_care/t/more-americans-head-overseas-health-care/#.WX4fIoopB-U
!4 Million Americans Will Go Abroad for Medical Care - Fiscal Times.
Medical tourism” was valued at about $439 billion last year in a new report by Visa and Oxford Economics, which projected that it could grow 25 percent a year over the next decade. This year, an estimated 1.4 million Americans will leave the country for a medical procedure, according to Patients Beyond Borders.
In addition to traveling in order to save money, some medical tourists plan trips because they want to have a treatment that’s not approved in the United States or because they’ll have a shorter wait by going abroad.
A lot of people go to Costa Rica for their dentist and arthritis. And I know people who travel to the UK for heart surgery.