Medical Tourism Growing: Does The U.S. Provide The Best Care?

Medical Tourism Growing: Does The U.S. Provide The Best Care? in General Healthcare

Back before Election Day, there was plenty of debate on which health care reform would work best in the country.

Would the government be better at providing quality care, or would competition incentivize better care?

Well, if you’d look at the growing medical tourism trend, it might be neither. A foreign country might provide better care — at a much cheaper rate.

Medical tourism is when a patient travels overseas to another country, say India, for an expensive medical procedure. Why would anyone do such a thing? Care overseas is much, much cheaper.

According to a BusinessWeek article, a surgery that costs around $50,000 in the U.S. might only cost $10,000 in India.

On one hand, everyone wins.

The health insurance company pays less than half for major medical care in a foreign country even if they pay for the plane ticket. That might mean more health coverage for a patient, and could even mean lower premiums.

But on the other hand, there’s the obvious. If something goes wrong, does the patient have the same rights as in the U.S.? Can the patient be sure the care will actually be high quality?

Unfortunately, the answer would be ‘no’ to both questions. Although, there is an American non-profit organization that accredits hospitals and other helath facilities overseas for providing quality care.

Health insurance companies are also wary of follow-up health care from overseas procedures. Do they send the patient back overseas? Do they cover physical therapy or other follow-up care in the U.S.?

The BusinessWeek article wrote that many insurers are starting to get over their initial worries.

So will medical tourism become regular practice? If so, what does that say about our health care system in the U.S.? Has our health system become so inefficient and expensive that we’re doomed and have to travel across the globe to get cheap, quality care?

The comments section awaits.

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