Health Care is Becoming More Accessible Thanks to Medical Tourism

Octavio Herrera Guardiola asked:

There are about 45 millions of Americans who does not have health insurance and it is due to the rising costs of health care. According to the national coalition for health care, “In 2007 the total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent — two times the rate of inflation. Total spending was $2.3 TRILLION in 2007, or $7600 per person. Total health care spending represented 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP)”.

I suggest you to search for the movie Sicko from Michel Moore on your local video store and you will see how health care insurance companies think about their customers, and you will see why you don’t have the finest health care system in the world as president Nixon said.

But some years ago something came up, something that started to care about those millions of Americans who needed surgical procedures that were not available because of the high costs or the long wait times. Something that even can make a reality the dream to have plastic surgery.

Medical tourism is traveling to another country to get medical treatment, and the main reason for people to go overseas for health care is the cost, but there are other reasons like the shorter wait times to get attention on the procedures you may need and the top notch medical facilities and expertise of doctors in countries like India, Thailand and Colombia.

Many doctors and so called specialist says that traveling outside the United States in search for health care involves a lot of risks, but I think that is more risky to try to get health care in a country where almost 15% of his population can’t get access to health insurance just because it prohibitive costs. Don’t misunderstand me, I think America is a great country one of the bests in the world, but hey about health care America got the 37th place just above Slovenia.

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Damjan

February 13th, 2009 at 2:30 AM

America has a tradition of fine medicine, but today country’s are branding their health systems and providing international standard healthcare at one half to one fifth of the cost of the United States. Perhaps unaware of a flattening playing field, or unwilling to acknowledge that the game has changed, many, but not all, hospitals and health providers in the US are still playing by the old rules of healthcare - low transparency in the form of impossible to understand ICD9 codes on medical bills, focus on profit instead of health outcomes, and facilities that are built to maximize profits by maxing out insurance reimbursement. All this, as opposed to Hospitals like Bumungrad International in Thailand that feels more like a five star resort than a hospital, but is JCI accredited nonetheless and has five star standards all across the board.

But, medical tourism is not an all purpose cure. Traveling to new countries, adjusting to language and cultural differences, being treated by an unknown physician, the difficulties with recieving follow up care, difficulty in transfering medical histories, as well as the need, in many cases, by patients to coordinate an entire trip including airfare, ground transportation, hotel stay on their own make a trip to get treated in another country a tall task, indeed.