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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- For millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans, health reform legislation will soon remove some of the barriers preventing them from getting the coverage they need.
The most immediate changes affecting those who don't have health insurance, or are not buying enough insurance to meet their needs, start in about 81 days.
Total bill ~ Easily under 10000$ (versus 100 grand over here?)
I'm not kidding, it's everywhere in the news. It's called Medical Tourism and this is what screwed up healthcare in the West has driven people to
Last time I went to the hospital back there during 2003, it was packed with Americans, Canadians and Europeans. I bet it's spiked of late.
Thank you for mentioning this. Besides the low labor cost, the other reasons why it's cheap to have surgery there is because it's a CASH SYSTEM with very few intermediaries, with REAL COMPETITION, and PRICE TRANSPARENCY. When government & insurance companies get involved, true competition and price transparency go away, so you end up with lousy care and high prices....which is what we have in varying degress in almost all the developed countries, with the USA being the worst.
Thank you for mentioning this. Besides the low labor cost, the other reasons why it's cheap to have surgery there is because it's a CASH SYSTEM with very few intermediaries, with REAL COMPETITION, and PRICE TRANSPARENCY. When government & insurance companies get involved, true competition and price transparency go away, so you end up with lousy care and high prices....which is what we have in varying degress in almost all the developed countries, with the USA being the worst.
Agreed. Insurance is a very good concept, but somewhere along the line the pork-lovers stepped in and given the amount of complexities American system injects into every other public thing, what was intended to help citizens has become a persecutor in itself.
It's unfortunate.
This is like socialism. It was intended to benefit the common man and emancipate him into the 19th century, but it gave way to communism and all sorts of isms.
But it's not like these people are performing heart surgeries cheap coz they are cheap. Several try to draw a parallel with technology or manufacturing, where outsourcing has taken over by leaps and bounds. While outsourcing in those fields has given way to compromise in quality, in medical treatment, not at all.
Medicine is the highest sought after profession in India. I was born there, so I know From every school and college, the cream of the students aspire to become doctors. That's why the heart and neuro-surgeons out there are world class. The lower cost is simply because of economics. For the average Indian citizen, the medical cost of a heart surgery is still astronomical. But when currency exchange comes into play, it becomes way too low for someone who deals in dollars or euros. It's almost laughably cheap.
WHO would have ever dreamed of going to another country for that? I wouldn't have and it may come to more and more doing that when this new HC takes effect here in the USA. There is already a shortage of Primary Care doctors and we are going to end up with longer and longer waits to have anything done or to even see a doctor.
Maybe the USA needs to look at how they do things there so people here CAN afford the care they need without taxing us to death.
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