Medical Tourism is a Low Cost Alternative to the American Healthcare System

Medical patients are traveling internationally to: receive higher quality healthcare, bypass wait lines and save money.

According to the 2006 Health Confidence Survey: · 31% of Americans rated the healthcare system as poor1. · The primary cause for dissatisfaction among Americans is the increasing healthcare costs1. Currently medical travelers are seeking treatments that are not covered by insurance or are simply too expensive such as dental care and cosmetic surgery. On the other hand with 45.7 million uninsured citizens in 20072, medical tourism may offer a feasible alternative to the existing system.

The U.S. Healthcare System

The current American healthcare system is made up of both private and public insurers. What is unique about the US system is that the private element dominates the public2.

Public Health Insurance Companies

These insurance companies are owned by the government. For the most part they cover seniors, the disabled, children from low income households, very poor parents, pregnant women, and veterans. According to federal law, the states are required to cover these groups2.

Often people insured with public healthcare have to purchase supplemental insurance due to 2:

· Incomplete coverage

· No dental care

· And more

Adults with no children are not entitled to public healthcare and many individuals who cannot afford healthcare are not eligible because their income is considered too high2.

Private Health Insurance Companies

The current private insurance system offers most citizens with low quality care at a high cost. This may be caused by the lack of competition as well as the predetermined costs and procedures that an insurance company will cover. As a result, the quality of care is based on a patient’s level of financial coverage and the amount of money the doctor will receive for the treatment3.

The following factors contribute to the high costs of healthcare available in the U.S.:

· Price and service are not sensibly packaged resulting in higher costs and lower quality4.

· Healthcare is fragmented among specialties and different providers, and communication among providers treating the same patient is often nonexistent.

· Out-of-pocket expenses are increasing each year. In 2003, 43.1% of Americans under age 65 spent over 00/year in out-of-pocket health care costs, including that of health insurance5.

· Wasteful spending of increased healthcare budgets. Inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, and inappropriate care, waste and fraud significantly increase the cost of medical care and health insurance for employers, workers and families6.

Medical Tourism a Cost Effective Solution

With patients paying out-of-pocket expenses in addition to health insurance costs, it is becoming increasingly popular for U.S. patients to travel abroad for surgery and other medical treatments3. Treatment centers abroad typically offer low cost packages that include:

o Cost of the full treatment

o Physician and hospital and administration fees

o High quality of care

o Facilities and phy­sicians that meet American standards

o The use advanced technologies for patient security and safety

o Lodging and airfare

For more details and to learn more about medical tourism read: Medical Travelers and the American Healthcare System – A Cost Effective Solution

References

1. 2006 Health Confidence Survey, Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2006 ,November 2006, Vol. 27, No. 11

2a. Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: Poverty and Share of Americans Without Health Insurance Were Higher in 2007 – And Median Income for Working-Age Households Was Lower – Than at the Bottom of Last Recession For Poverty Rate and Non-Elderly Median Income, Worst Performance on Record For Any Six Years of Economic Growth Robert Greenstein, Sharon Parrott and Arloc Sherman August 26, 2008 2.Kao-Ping Chua, AMSA Jack Rutledge Fellow 2005-2006: Overview of the U.S. Health Care System, February 10, 2006

3. The Market for Medical Care: Why You Don’t Know the Price; Why You Don’t Know about Quality; And What Can Be Done about It.

NCPA Policy Report No. 296 (ISBN #1-56808-169-3), February 2007 (http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/st296.pdf)

4. Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2006).

5. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Out-of-Pocket Expenditures on Health Care and Insurance Premiums Among the Non-elderly Population, 2003, March 2006. (http://www.ahrq.gov/news/nn/nn031506.htm)

6. The National Coalition on Health Care. Facts on the Cost of Health Insurance and Health Care. 2009 (http://www.nchc.org/documents/Cost Fact Sheet-2009.pdf)

7. McKinsey Global Institute. Accounting for the Cost in the United States. January 2007

8. Catharine W. Burt and Jane E. Sisk, “Which Physicians and Practices Are Using Electronic Medical Records?” Health Af­fairs, Vol. 24, No. 5, September/October 2005, pages 1,334-43.

9. Mercer Health & Benefits predicts this will be the case. See Judy Foreman, “Bon Voyage, and Get Well!” Boston Globe, October 2, 2006.

10. Medical Tourism: Health Care Free Trade. Devon Herrick, NCPA Policy Report No. 623, 2008 (http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba623)