Your Medical Tourism Has Now Become a Work Requirement
Prices are so inexpensive for medical tourists these days, particularly for procedures where going to India might really make sense (seriously - who wouldn't want to save $93,000 on a coronary bypass if the difference is negligible in terms of quality of care - and in fact you'd probably do better in a top-3 Indian hospital than in a typical American suburban facility. It's easy to figure out where to go, too, thanks to lots of coverage of the phenomenon and to websites replete with links to help you plan your Malaysian procedure so that you have plenty of time to tour afterwards.But it had to happen eventually - health insurance companies have run the numbers and they are beginning to get it that if they provide incentives to employees to get their surgical procedures outside the U.S., patients will go, and the cost to employers will be dramatically decreased. It's a weird form of health insurance, but it could be a huge market force in a very complex healthcare marketplace particularly where employees of small companies are concerned, and that's 2/3 of the U.S. population.
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This trend of outsourcing medical care is on the verge of going prime time. As you mentioned, it is a potential huge market force since so many people are employed by small companies. The link to the LA Times article has expired, but I think it is the same one I read that reports on what United Group Programs (UGP) of Boca Raton, Florida is doing. They are an administrator of group insurance plans and have recently added a hospital in Thailand to its list of preferred providers. This means that the more than 100,000 Americans on one of their plans now have the option of covered medical tourism. I think once word gets out to the masses of how effective this is the flood gates will open and we will see many more plans that cover medical tourism.
More details from the LA Time story and some additional information is in this article on Medical care outsourcing.
- by Mark George on Oct 7, 2006 at 2:38 PM | link