And you can fix patients with a hand held device that goes bling bling.
There should be a system in place to provide free health care to the poor. We must have a semblance of respect for the needy. They have kids who need shots and health care. They are like all of us an accident of birth. Didnt choose poor parents just the way it worked out.
We cant outsourse primary care. But optional opoerations can be. The trend may be disturbing but it only applies to the ones with money. However Canada should look into doing operations for Americans. They could expand their care to make profit and help pay for it.
I think it’s great. It’s one way the free market can push costs down. I’d love to see more of it. I have a friend from Argentina and last year she scheduled her trip home to coincide with some minor surgery. It was as if she traveled home for free, and then some. And I’ve heard that people in San Diego routinely go to Tijuana for medical care.
We have a controlled market here, Thats why going abroad would work. Eventually the cost will have to be brought down here.
We have our medical help rationed in this country. If you cant afford it ,you dont get it.
Outsourcing has a lot of limits, and probably should be used infrequently. I think it coud have a good role in radiology and elective surgery (especially orthopedics).
Some of these limits:
- Outsourcing has little role in emergency care.
- Many patients are too sick to travel. Air travel in particular places much additional stress on oxygen requirements due to changes in atmospheric pressure.
- Many patients wish for the support of friends and family who presumably would not be flying with the patient to Pondicherry.
- Many doctors and hospitals routinely charge foreign patients more for procedures than local patients (I rarely do this myself) – this would lessen the savings.
- Travel and accomodation adds additional costs.
- Foreign hospitals may be well equipped – or not. Doctors and nurses may be well trained – or not. Presumably better places would be used, but it’s kind of hard to check your surgeons qualifications in Bogota.
- In most countries, not everyone speaks English.
- How would insurance companies deal with delayed post-op complications, problems do to the actual travel, lawsuits due to (theoretically) higher rates of infection? (I know they COULD, but these questions need to be addressed).
- If the savings would not be passed on to the customer, why would they choose that insurance given other competitive options?
Radiology seems to be the field most headed in this direction – you can send an X-ray or CT scan over the Internet without sending the patient, and get someone to interpret it.
Lots of people go to good hospitals in Colombia, Argentina and India for elective surgery, and claim to save 60% or more over American costs. Nice, if nothing goes wrong.
Canada has a big shortage of family doctors. I have personally seen a lot of foreign trained doctors in family medicine residency programs. The obstacles in Canada for a foreign doctor to become a Canadian family doctor are substantial. This is not always a bad thing – in some countries becoming a medical student means knowing the right people or having the right surname regardless of ability or knowledge. Many foreign trained doctors are brilliant, IME, but many are very poor by Canadian standards too.
Reading of xrays and scans has been going on in India for years. Does it worry people that their medical information is flying around the world.?
The idea that our health info is private is long gone.
It will get interesting when insurance companies have to grapple with moving operations outside our borders to increase profits. Corporations have no loyalties or concience.I think border states will be the first to feel it. When you can make a short drive to get an operation and increase insurance profits ,who is to say they wont start pushing it.