Sunscreen, A Swimsuit, and Your Health Insurance Card
According to a Business Week article, most of the major US health insurance carriers are moving towards including overseas hospitals in their provider networks, in an effort to encourage policy holders to utilize the much less expensive services that can be found in many of Asia’s top-notch private hospitals. Most of the hospitals are accredited by Joint Commission International, which is the same non-profit organization that accredits American hospitals – so quality control shouldn’t be an issue. If something does go wrong though, patients do not have anywhere near the legal recourse in Asia that they have here in the US.
Price is the obvious reason for the increase in medical procedures moving offshore, where a colonoscopy can be done for under $700, and heart surgery for $20,000. If health insurance companies offer incentives like deductible waivers and travel expense reimbursement, it’s likely that they will have more and more people willing to take a trip overseas to get medical care.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield network formed the first medical offshoring partnership last month, in an agreement with Bumrungrad Hospital, in Bangkok, Thailand, and more health insurance carriers are likely to follow suit. Here in Colorado, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield is one of our largest and most popular carriers, so it will be interesting to see if we start hearing anything from our clients about medical tourism.
Medical care in the US is dramatically more expensive than it is at high-quality hospitals in the rest of the world. But since our health care system – based on a system of private health insurance that typically limits patients to providers within the US – has been relatively insulated from global market pressures, health care prices in other countries haven’t really had an effect here in the past. It will be interesting to see if an increase in travel abroad for medical care results in more competitive prices here at home. Or perhaps providers in other countries will start to bring their prices more in line with American health care rates. Either way, it will be interesting to see what percentage of American medical procedures are performed overseas ten years from now.
(More information on medical tourism at the Health Business Blog)
ou’re welcome to visit MedRetreat, a U.S. owned and operated medical tourism service agency, at http://www.medretreat.com for a more thorough education about medical tourism. MedRetreat was developed to help protect the American consumer when traveling abroad to receive medical procedures.
As a Colorado boy, I was glad to see Blue Cross – Blue Shield starting to realize the patient and insurer benefits to medical tourism. It should also reduce the premiums which are notoriously high.
One thing you should also become aware of in the medical tourism manner of things is the value a service like ours can give. Though I’m from Colorado I live full time in Bombay (Mumbai), India and am a co-director of America’s Medical Solutions, Pvt., Ltd. (www.americasmedicalsolutions.com). We are a private concierge service that does just about everything for the client coming to India. All three of us are Americans living full time in India.
We have chosen to give our concierge services away. We do pickup and delivery to and from the airport and hotels in the finest of automobiles and with professional drivers. We help negotiate purchases and shopping which would otherwise result in “rip-offs” of the unsuspecting, etc. We make advance reservations at the finest hotels and restaurants or guest houses. We help design and obtain any ticketing desired from professional providers and we’ve even been known to bring a McDonald’s® burger or a Dominos Pizza® into patient’s rooms. We know of long term housing at reasonable rates for those who need IVF or other long term procedures, and the finest private hospitals, doctors and clinics the world has ever seen. Think of a Five Star Hotel room with a hospital bed in it and you’ll get the right picture. There is simply nothing on this scale in the west.
While clients are under no obligation, as in a fine restaurant, we average a 15% ( + – ) gratuity if our client believes our services have been worthwhile. This keeps us on our toes for all the best that India has to offer without any axes to grind. And since we have lived here 24/7/365 for so many years, it’s hard to fool us. We are your bridge to Asia and your wish is our command. It’s also a little hard to fool a patient as to whether our services were appreciated or not.
This is medical tourism par excellence!
Don Wood, Director
Universal Health Care & Medical Tourism
Is it possible to create universal health through medical tourism? Or does it just create a brain drain that benefits wealthy travelers? Maybe it’s too soon to tell.
You bring up some interesting points:
1. Will Medial Tourism force prices down in the US? This is a much more complicated economic reality that it sounds. Its not as easy to just lower prices of medical care here in the US. The major issue causing the high cost is Medical Malpractice Insurance costs and the litigious nature of our society. Before this changes costs can’t come down if hospitals and insurance companies wish to maintain a profit.
2. I don’t know the answer about when Medical Insurance Companies and Businesses feel comfortable enough to send patients overseas in large numbers. This will be interesting to see how this pans out.