Going Abroad For Surgeries No Longer Uncommon
Medical tourism is a $40 billion business globally, and the people packing their bags most frequently are Americans. Numerous nations–notably India, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia–are making a lot of money off the American healthcare system’s problems, but it isn’t all bad news for the U.S. Medical tourism companies are cropping up across the country–approximately 50 so far–and there’s no end in sight. It’s not just a case of Americans traveling abroad for surgery. Europeans and Arabs are going to other countries as well.
How do the doctors feel about this? Some physicians will say that it’s a great way to offload treatments that don’t pay well, anyway, because the insurance companies will only pay $19,000 for that $100,000 operation, and $19,000, by the time they take care of overhead, isn’t that much.
Americans could contact an accredited hospital in Malaysia directly to find out if one of its surgeons can do a kidney transplant, but because it’s complicated to determine which hospital is right for each person and operation the medical tourism agencies have caught on. A few American health insurance agencies already have pilot programs looking into the feasibility of paying lower costs for people to travel abroad and have expensive surgery, which means that businesses may soon be offering medical tourism packages to their employees. Even more telling, some American hospitals now have branch hospitals overseas to capitalize on medical tourism. Yes! Who can beat having plastic surgery for $5,000 versus $16,000 to $20,000 in the U.S.
