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Old 04-02-2010, 07:09 AM
 
Location: Michigan
29,391 posts, read 55,503,961 times
Reputation: 22043

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Old 04-02-2010, 03:49 PM
 
Location: Wherever women are
19,012 posts, read 29,665,791 times
Reputation: 11309
Or.........

1200$ round trip to India.

Less than 5000$ for even open heart surgery.

Best doctors, nurses, hospitable country.

1000$, a tour of the country with a rich history.

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.
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Old 04-03-2010, 01:29 AM
 
30,876 posts, read 36,858,638 times
Reputation: 34467
Quote:
Originally Posted by Antlered Chamataka View Post
Or.........

1200$ round trip to India.

Less than 5000$ for even open heart surgery.

Best doctors, nurses, hospitable country.

1000$, a tour of the country with a rich history.

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.
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Old 04-03-2010, 07:39 AM
 
Location: Wherever women are
19,012 posts, read 29,665,791 times
Reputation: 11309
Quote:
Originally Posted by mysticaltyger View Post
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.

Here's a link:
Lower costs lure U.S. patients abroad for treatment - CNN.com

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.

That link up there speaks between 10K and 175K
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Old 04-03-2010, 08:26 AM
 
Location: In the real world!
2,178 posts, read 9,564,442 times
Reputation: 2847
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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