Medical Tourism to India, All Expenses Paid

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My father, now deceased, was at one time the principal auditor for all of the church-based hospitals of one of the U.S.s largest denominations. As such he visited and inspected all their accounts and other financial records.
He spent some time with my family in the Southwest. During one visit he had audited several hospitals over a three-state period and he was was quite down-hearted. Being an honest man, beyone any reproach, he was apalled at the careless spending of virtually all the hospitals he audited.
Instead of different hospitals in a metropolitan area each buying some items of great expense and then sharing the equipment among these hospitals, each hospital felt it necessary to purchase the same identical equipment. Each hospital had to have a helicopter or two, etc., resulting in tremendous costs to each. Why did they do that?
The facts were that the hospitals, all not-for-profit institutions, were making so much money that they were endangering this status. But rather than lower prices, they made unneeded purchases to remain qualified for the not-for-profit advantage.
Americans are, therefore, paying good money for all the fancy furnitures and decorations and dubious health practices so that they could continue these unsupported costs to the patients who had to pay for them.
This was considered extremely unconsciounable to my father, and his objections led to his early retirement at the age of 72.
When you read the tremendously expensive advertisements put out constantly by hospitals, you can bet that these are published in order to remain a "non-profit" organization.

clark wright of IA 6:16PM November 29, 2008

Wellpoint has Medicaid contracts (billing) and billing/reimbursement contracts with hospitals. It would be interesting to know many legal and illegal aliens from India and other countries come to America and take advantage of our free care in emergency rooms or under these health insurer managed Medicaid programs. It astounds me that THOSE WITHOUT ANY LIABILITY,MEDICAL DEGREE OR MEDICAL LICENSE are now spinning medical tourism as the next big wave that will save our ailing health care system. Is this just another example of big business - in this case health insurers- using stockholder, policyholder and operating income (from doctors, pharmacists etc.) to provide themselves with financial bonuses and to promote outsourcing at the cost of high paying US JOBS!
Health insurers have already pushed pharmacies, inpatient and outpatient centers to purchase outsourced products like generic drugs, medical test kits, medical supplies etc. The AP recently reported that Wellpoint has offered money to doctors if they switch their patients from brand name drugs to more profitable foreign manufactured generic drugs.
How many times have health insurers failed to cut costs and improve our health care system...? Maybe if health insurers stopped paying over the top prices for spin doctors, lobbists and legal defense, they'd have enough money to pay for competent (and LICENSED) clinical care here in the US.

Anne PME of 8:33AM November 26, 2008

Google's Gapminder Project at http://graphs.gapminder.org allows you to sift their huge databases (mostly UN reported data) and see what the reality is in the world in many ways and points of comparison adding further to Glenn Contrarian's sources.
Frontline also did a detailed study in depth of the specific differences of five countries and how they have structured UHC differently and what is the up and downside of each decision. In every case, the system is better by far than the US, but some work out better in some issues than others. Taiwan had a commission to look at everyone's experiment to plan their system, we have the advantage og all of those and Taiwan too.

Freedem of FL 4:30PM November 25, 2008

Two years ago in the Philippines I had six crowns inserted, five fillings replaced, a teeth cleaning, and a root canal...and cavity and cleaning work for my wife and youngest son. This was all done in the span of ONE week by a dentist registered with the American Dental Association...for about a thousand dollars.
A friend of mine couldn't bear children - so she went overseas to get surgery that she couldn't get here. She now has a healthy little boy.
For every foreigner who comes to America to get the health-care that only ten percent of Americans can afford...hundreds of us go overseas or to Mexico or Central America to get what we can't afford here.
When America wises up and gets Universal Health Care like EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED DEMOCRACY ON THE PLANET, we'll live longer and spend less on health care.
BS, you say? According to the CIA World Factbook, the TOP TWENTY-SEVEN COUNTRIES in terms of national life expectancy have Universal Health Care...and NONE of them pay much more than half as much as U.S. taxpayers ALREADY pay for the health-care charlie-fox we already have.
It ain't the immigrants - Germany has a worse (largely Islamic) illegal immigrant problem than we do, yet they have UHC, spend less than we already do, and live longer.
Whatever complaints you may have against Universal Health Care, the numbers don't lie. The top twenty-seven ALL have UHC, and none of them spend much more than half as much as the U.S. government already does.

Glenn Contrarian of WA 2:47AM November 25, 2008

We could at least cut back on medical costs by taking out the profit making middle man, the insurance companies.
Hospitals and doctors' offices used to be places of compassion. Now, everything is driven by the system to be a profit center. If other countries can manage to do this, so can we.
I am a part of a joint effort clinical trial, run in the US and in a European country. Red tape and regulation has delayed the US side by half a year, while the European country, with socialized medicine, is way ahead of us, although they started later.
Surely, our free market has caused a nightmare of a system, whereas one system of standards in the other place, allows for much more efficient operations.
Our hospitals seem to be geared to extract as much money for as little service possible in order to make their profit. Their system attempts to deliver the most service for the buck because of the one source payor.

goldengrain of NJ 10:09PM November 24, 2008

This isn't about piracy of US technology. The procedures are published in medical journals available worldwide. The equipment and medicines are similarly offered for sale worldwide. Do you think GE or Pfizer are being ripped off when they sell equipment and prescriptions to India? This is about liability and social policy - my American health care dollar goes to support the many, many late-night "hurt in an accident?" lawyer commercials and the hidden "universal health care" system of emergency room care where no-one can be denied health care just because they have no money (this is written in block letters in the waiting room, by the way).

Kurt Clemente of VA 5:25PM November 24, 2008

The trend towards medical tourism--having certain expenseive medical procedures done overseas at qualified hospitals--points to one thing: the obscene profiteering that goes on in the medical business in the US at practically all levels.

David F. Beer of TX 5:17PM November 24, 2008

THIS IS ONE WAY OF CONTROLLING THE RUN-AWAY MEDICAL COSTS WHICH ARE KILLING OUR MANUFACTURING SECTOR. THIS OPTION WILL ALSO HELP IN KEEPING THE MEDICAL COSTS IN CHECK AT HOME. THE IDEA HAS MERITS.

F. KHAN of TX 7:57AM November 24, 2008

Unless you count the Poor in the third world who are often used as guinea pigs to see what side effects will show up from new drugs, and if so tossed aside like so much medical waste. (see the book/movie "The Constant Gardner" for the scheme with the precise situation changed to avoid the liable suits) Or perhaps the other general profiteering that uses whatever handy propaganda scheme they can pawn of onto victims of the "Grand Wurlitzer" Koolade machine by the Gang Of Pirates.
An example is those Religious "charity" hospitals, that pay no taxes, close their books, and provide little charity, and hound people literally to death over bills that are ten times normal charges paid by insurance companies. But their claim of losses "in the millions" goes unchallenged. That facts are out there for anyone with "the Google".

Freedem of FL 11:11PM November 23, 2008

People have gone to India, and also Thailand because the American system is totally nuts. A good friend went to Thailand, paid the airfare, spent several weeks in a resort (a few days before and a few weeks recovering) and had a gall bladder operation, all for about a third the cost of just the gall bladder operation in her own city.
What is really sick of course is that as bad and unaffordable as American care is for Americans, it is worse for Thai, or Indians to get such care in their own countries. This is no different than calling to get technical assistance and talking to a person from these countries who could not afford the machine they are discussing, and taking the job of an American whose job used to pay enough that he could afford that machine.
Unless people can have jobs that pay enough to enable them to participate in their own economy, the entire system will crash and burn. American Epic wealth has been almost entirely looted and replaced with a Potemkin village of debt. I don't know how it will be turned about buy Children will likely envy their ancestors more than parents will envy their children for years to come.

Freedem of FL 10:19PM November 23, 2008