by Mridu Khullar
– India –
According to the National Coalition of Health Care in America, in 2007, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent—twice the rate of inflation. Healthcare spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense. And although 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on healthcare than other industrialized nations.
It is no wonder then that scores of American citizens are heading off to foreign shores for their healthcare needs.
New Yorker Danelle New, 29, was suffering from epilepsy, the residual effect of a car accident during high school. She suffered grand mal seizures lasting up to 20 minutes, which she says western doctors could not explain or understand. “My body would build up resistances to the pharmaceutical drugs and they would no longer work, which forced me to try and find other ways to solve the problem.”
New traveled to India in 2004, and has been seizure-free since. “It was a significant cost savings, as I had already spent thousands of dollars in medical expenses, not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars spent by my insurance company,” she says. This included a five-day hospital stay and medications that cost more than $700 a month.
In India, she spent $1,200 for successful therapy with “less than two months of prescription medication,” she adds.
India is, indeed, one of the biggest markets for medical tourism, where tourism companies now offer attractive packages that include treatment with a splendid view of the ocean.
“For many procedures, the cost is 50-90 percent lower in India versus the US,” says Herb Stephens, Co-Founder and CEO of Health Travel Guides. For instance, he says, open heart surgery costs between $55,000 to $100,000 in the US. In India, you would get it for $8,500. Hip replacement is $65,000 in the US, around $8,000 in India.
Mexico, too, is a popular destination, especially for Americans. The prices are comparable to those in India, but the flights are direct and cheaper.
The benefit, says Stephens, of working with a company such as his is that they take care of all the travel and medical details – no worrying about how to get to the hospital, which flights to book, and where to check in.
There are problems, however.
The British Medical Association advises people to be careful when considering treatment abroad, and says flying soon after surgery can cause complications. Some experts also question the healthcare available in countries such as India and Mexico.
“Some countries have image issues that extend erroneously to assumptions about healthcare,” says Stephens. “For example, India is a country with a very large population that includes a very large and visible segment of poor people. Many Americans see media examples of this poverty and erroneously assume that good healthcare must not be available. It’s a definite issue that international healthcare providers have to work to overcome.”
In his experience, he says, the prejudice is quickly and decisively dispelled for medical travelers who venture abroad. Most are shocked by the quality and modernity of the facilities, doctor training, hospital staff and equipment. “This is true not only of Indian hospitals like Apollo Group, but also hospitals in Mexico such as Grupo Angeles in Tijuana, ABC Hospital in Mexico City and Amerimed in Puerto Vallarta.
New admits to being pleasantly surprised during her trip to India. “I was surprised by how therapeutic the entire process was. I believe I had mentally prepared myself for something much more strange and maybe even more invasive than what I actually experienced.”
New sought natural treatments in India, but for most travelers, western medicine is still the big pull.
And the numbers are continuously increasing. Over 150,000 medical tourists traveled to India in 2002. The rate of increase has been 15 percent since then and reports indicate that India’s medical tourism earnings alone will increase to $2 billion by 2012.
The Government of India is making sure the country is ready by investing $6.5 billion in medical tourism infrastructure. In Mexico, StarMedica hospital groups built seven hospitals in the last five years, AmeriMed is opening ten new hospitals by 2012, and Grupo, the largest private hospital group in Mexico, is spending $700 million to build 15 hospitals in the next three years.
What does this mean for the United States? Plenty. It means that with rising international competition, American hospitals are likely to adopt aggressive marketing strategies, and maybe even create policy shifts allowing for better healthcare within the country.
In the meantime, patients seem happy with a variety of options available to them—at home or abroad.
“I would have spent multiple more thousands out of pocket to actually cure or even just more successfully treat my condition,” says New. Instead, she spent three months in India, “for a successful therapy that truly changed my body, my mind, and my approach to life.”
About the Author
Mridu Khullar is an independent journalist from New Delhi, India. For the past six years, she has written extensively about human rights and women’s issues in Asia and Africa. Her work has been published in Time, Elle, Marie Claire, Ms., Women’s eNews, and East West, among others. Visit her website at www.mridukhullar.com.
Patients considering Medical Tourism should consider reducing their research headaches by going through a reputable medical travel company like WorldMed Assist. It can be overwhelming to find the best country/hospital/doctor for the procedure needed. WorldMed Assist only partners with hospitals after multi-day, on-site screening. Many of the top surgeons in their partner network were trained in the U.S., and most hospitals have affiliations with renowned US medical centers such as Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical. Hospitals are squeaky clean, and all our patients have rated their overseas accommodations as five star.
Another important advantage of Medical tourism is access to procedures not widely practiced in the US, such as Hip Resurfacing –a better option for many patients than a hip replacement. Hip resurfacing was only approved by the FDA in 2006, so finding a skilled, experienced surgeon in the US is difficult
Though it’s always good to have options and I can’t blame people for travelling abroad for cheaper and equitable treatment, however the American economy and society will suffer in the long run. For example, healthcare in America is out of the reach of many for various reasons. One major reason being the cost, so many people let a situation that could have been taken care of cheaply with early diagnosis linger till they have to go to the emergency room where they can’t be refused treatment and they don’t have to pay for it. So tax payers pay for it.
Thanks to the politicians, lobbyists, special interest groups and government officials dancing around issues, the healthcare/health insurance situation in America will stay expensive and out of the reach of many and people will find solutions to their problems through medical tourism, going to the emergency room with no insurance etc and the tax payer will pay for it.
However with the current bad economy with the lack of jobs being a major issue, the number of tax payers are dwindling so realistically speaking, things are not going to be the way they were and America needs to realize that and make drastic changes quickly to correct the situation.
Medical Travel is growing increasingly popular by “word of mouth” Those that travel abroad for medical treatments are sharing the experience with family and friends and begins to spread. Especially with the Internet as a resource and as social networking has become commonplace online, it adds to the increased awareness. Medical Travel Facilitators are coordinating the journey’s abroad the same way the travel agencies once did.
I heard some commentary on NPR recently that talked about medical tourism in the context of the current US healthcare reform debate. The commentator was asking that if the single-payer system is truly off the table, whether the new legislation would allow him the freedom to choose a $20,000 procedure at a state-of-the-art facility in India over a $100,000 procedure at home. And if not, why?
With the US in the throes of a crippling recession and a healthcare system that makes up 1/6 of the nation’s economy, I hope that the dialog and decision-making on Capitol Hill ultimately takes into account what is in the best interest of the people and not the corporate giants of a for-profit system that has plunged so many of us into poverty over astronomical healthcare costs.
According to Dennis Kucinich – “One out of every three dollars in our current health care system goes for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, the cost of paperwork..If you took the money that’s being wasted and put it into a not-for-profit system, you’d suddenly have enough money to cover every American.”
Imagine…
This is something that I’ve really been looking into. I found a company that will do my weight loss surgery in mexico but I’m a little nervous about it. I mean, can these foreign doctors really be trusted? Anyone have any experience with this?