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India Woos Medical Tourists
aspelling writes "It's not only quality hardware and software that can be done in India for a fraction of the cost. BBC reports that India has a generation of world class doctors capable of doing joint replacement, heart, neuro and cancer surgery at their state-of-the-art facilities. Don't be surprised when your physician prescribes you a trip to Bombay. Indian officials are working hard with HMOs around the world to make this dream come true."
What is an HMO? Isn't it a facet of the American private health care system? There are no HMOs in the country where I live (Canada).
which essentially means that people in developed countries just so much overpaid for what they do it is unbelievable!
a cruel joke of the capitalist economy, as our socialist friends would say...
If you needed open heart surgery or a liver transplant, would you still go to India to do it because "it costs less money"?
Are doctors in India "certified" by the government? do they get inspected regularly for standards of practice?
I don't want to bash Indian doctors or criticise anyone's decision to valuate medical work purely based on its cost; I just feel the readers should be informed of the potential risks associated with getting major treatments done in other countries just because of financial reasons.
What if I pick a bad doctor and he messes me up or whatever? Who can I sue? In all likelihood hed be gone after I left.
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
Just yesterday a friend of mine with an degree in economics was talking about the push in that field to move much of the work offshore.
This applies to any profession - there is no "safe" field. Look at law - despite what television tells you, most people with law degrees aren't engaging in clever courtroom rhetoric all day, or even at all, but doing "back office" stuff. This, too, can be offshored in time.
I'm not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, or that I have any answers, but it *is* obvious that saying "just get a new career in accounting/law/marketing/whatever!" is naive because there is no strictly "safe" field to start with, and never will be.
Yes less need for lawyers, why? Because HMO's will offer you a plan stating that all non-emergency surgeries will be performed outside the US. IANAL, but it seems that if you agree to go out of the country for surgeries in exchange for lower cost health care, than all malpractice lawsuits should/would be handled in India. LOL, it just came to mind that we would also be outsourcing our lawyers to india.
later,
epic
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
While, as an Indian, I am flattered by your opinion, your argument is flawed. I think that the Indians you've met are good at the math and sciences because their parents pushed their children to become engineers.
Furthermore, almost every culture that has existed for thousands of years has had a few great scientists. Are the British inherently any smarter because Issac Newton was British, or the French any wiser because Pascal was French? Obviously not!
Contrary to the claims of the council, Dr Baru believes there will be no trickle down of money to the impoverished public health system, which currently receives just 0.9% of India's gross domestic product. The MTC's plans may well benefit the doctors and patients involved, but it is currently unclear how a country that still suffers from malaria and TB will reap the rewards of a new wave of medical tourists coming to India.
India has a long way to go before Americans are going to accept their HMO's forcing them there.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Laws need to be passed to protect the people. These insurance companies are evil. We would be better off with a state run health insurance system than the hyena's that currently run the insurance companies.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
The only issue I have with India as a "doctors" country is the poor record they have on transplants. I've read (sorry don't remember the source, try google), that many poor Indians are willing to sell their (or even their children's) kidney's just to get some cash. And the article went on about how some of the poor and unimportant people that no-one would miss are used as cheap and reliable sources of hearts and liver for transplants.
So yes, joint operations are fine, I'd be vary of the ethical consequences of getting a cheap transplant in India.
On the other hand if any of you lot have lost jobs due to outsourcing, what a great way to get even, "Kill Bill style".
Also relate is the article in last week's Sunday Times (English ones) about English people going to Budapest to have their teeth fixed for a fraction of the cost.
People in the US sell their blood for personal profit. Or their babies. Or hire out their wombs. Selling parts of yourself for financial gain isn't exclusive to India, or even the developing world in general: it happens in the developed world too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Typical. You're more worried about who you'd be able to sue than the fact that you'd be left without a healthy kidney.
Is it any wonder lawyers piss all over everyone in the US when there are people like you who worry more about litigation rights than their own health?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
My goodness, sooner or later the whole world will end up in india! theres short term bonuses to be had at the moment, as its a poorer country, but surely if this keeps happening they'll eventually be as rich as the USA because of the amount of work and they'll want to outsource to here, as it'll be cheaper! ...maybe ;)
Boy, the process just accelerates every day, doesn't it?
Given that large multinational companies are now figuring out how to outsource pretty much everything that Americans make a middle-class living at... How does a geek plan for the future?
Not to be Mr. Negative-Pants, but the future appears to be one where a thin layer of prosperity on the level of a Pakistani bricklayer is smeared around the globe.
So... how do we plan for this? Any creative ideas out there?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
Which airlines will carry a person,
who tells them - up-front - that
they have a heart or other serious
medical condition?
(And any insurance may not cover
them if they don't tell them...)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
>>Typical. You're more worried about who you'd be able to sue than the fact that you'd be left without a healthy kidney.
It's called "thinking ahead," numbskull! Choosing medical care is a cost/benefit/risk assessment. A botched kidney transplant isn't like a bad haircut which corrects itself after a time. Dialysis isn't free (in terms of money and time -- taking approximately half a day, twice a week) and there are substantial medical complications one can expect (including stoke, liver damage, infection, hemmorhage, toxemia, death) from long-term dialysis. If medical negligence causes harm (as per this example), the patient should not have to suffer the financial burden of these injuries as well. Therefore, it's appropriate to look beyond the surgery itself and weigh the risks of a poor outcome -- in the event of negligence, will the patient be able to seek legal recourse?
But I suppose, in your eyes, it would be more noble for the person to just say "well, that's that... I'll go die now" and quietly go away?
The real blame if something like this REALLY happens is the doctors themselves...
Here in Detroit, the costs of medical care are completely outrageous.
I have had the "opportunity" to have some relatively benign medical proceedures done and the costs of these proceedures was astronomical
Proceedure 1: Partial removal of ingrown toenail. $778.00
Proceedure 2: earwax removal: $190.00
I personally know that the ear-wax removal can be done for $50.00 at a place about an hour away. When you consider that the proceedure consists of the doctor looking in your ear (yep, there is a lot of wax in there), dumping a few drops of a chemical into your ear canal, telling you to lay on your side for 10 minutes (doctor leaves the room at this time to do something else), doctor returns after 10 minutes and squirts a lot of very cold water in your ear canal and the wax is now gone. Total time: 20 minutes.
It's no wonder that someone would consider it reasonable to send medical work off to india. With the amount of overcharging that is "the way things are done" here, it's only a matter of time before things get shaken up...
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
There is no moral to this story except that everything you use and buy - except food - will get cheaper and cheaper.
Actually, the moral seems to be government subsidies work.
Ummm, I think the difference in the things you listed is that they DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DIE, such as giving up your heart is wont to do.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Blame the AMA. They've been trying to keep the number of doctors down for years to keep salaries up. It's a shame, too, I think most doctors in your situation would prefer to make less money if it meant they could, you know, sleep sometimes.
Maybe everyone is scared that the entire western world is being undercut by a bunch of people in some country half-way around the world who will work 10 times harder than any of us, accept a fraction of the wages and probably even do the job better! i dont know about you guys but that thought scares the absolute shit out of me, i reckon its time to join the exploiters at the top of the corporations - you've gotta make the fast buck now and retire or your job is gonna go - its time to kick everyone else off the ladder and scurry up now.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I'd be recommending checking out the great social welfare system that our western money buys the Indians. Or, wait? Will you see extreme powerty on your way from the luxery airport to the luxery hotel, and then from the luxery hotel to the luxery hospital?
Well guess how they can be so damn cheap, I'd wager that the programmers are happy as hell that they aren't in the slum, and the companies are happy that they don't have to pay to clean up the slum.
Think about that, next time you want to outsource something to India... Maybe you should demand that they spread our wealth a bit better when they get a piece of it.
Is playing third world countries off against each other to force ever lower salaries. The US is the greatest organization ever made. We made ourselves rich, and now the rest of the world wants a piece, so now, we get to play with our dough, doing nothing, while we say: "oh, Indian can do it for $10, but the Chinese can do it for $9, can you match!"
After India has its little boom and starts to get pricey, then, we will start training computer programmers and doctors in Latin America and Africa.
Hah! In the meantime, when you take my job as a programmer, just keep in mind that when I'm pumping gas I'll still be making more than you! And if you think you are going to get more, we Americans will replace you with people from Africa, then from Latin America, and then we will build robots, and then make robots to build our robots for us, and we won't need you any more.
Your dream of becoming a first world nation based solely on exports is a false one.
This is my sig.
This is no dream, ITS A NIGHTMARE! Is this how the Republicans intend to fix our healthcare system? This is beyond crazy.
Most people going to med school these days are NOT primarily concerning with getting out of the hospital with a Mercedes. I graduated from Harvard college in 1997, and my classmates who DID want a Mercedes went into management consulting and investment banking, and have been making 6 figure salaries for 7 years now. Some of them are millionaires.
In contrast, your average medical student: lives in a tiny dorm/apartment throughout med school, takes out an average of $95,000 in loans, and when they finally graduate and do a residency, they make only $40,000 per year. (Subtract out loan payments.) When they do their fellowship to become a specialist, they will get paid about the same.
You are wrong about the timing: it's more than 10 years to become a specialist- at a minimum: 4 college, 4 med school, 3 residency, 3 fellowship= 14 years with negative or small salary.
And the training is grueling- if prisoners were forced to work as hard as residents, it would be ruled cruel and unusual. You can look at the new work-hour guidelines for residents that are supposed to IMPROVE the situation- 80 hours/week averaged over a month, work an average of 6 days a week, shifts can't be longer than 36 hours straight! Note that many programs are still working residents harder than that!
Even after finishing training and starting a successful practice, would you want to continue to work 60-70 hours per week, plus be woken up receiving phone calls from patients all night for the rest of your adult life? How about regularly being woken up to go into the hospital in the middle of the night when one of your patients has a heart attack?
Honestly, most doctors deserve to be paid more than what they are making. There are still a couple of specialties where doctors are RELATIVELY overpaid, but your average doctor deserves at least what he or she is making. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the medical profession, but doctors getting paid too much is not one of them. And to address the original topic, the contribution of doctor's fees to total healthcare expeditures in this country is miniscule. Some of it has do do with liability insurance and the high cost of hospitalizing patients with all of our expensive, modern technology.
No, they need the $ because they have to pay off the med school $150K debt they have, and then they have to make crap $ while residents at 80 hours a week. When they sign at a hospital they have to pay a fee to be on staff, take night call and run in at 2am, take indigent patients who walk into ER with an aneurysm and get $0 for the work, and then pay $100K per year for malpractice insurance (even if theyve never been sued). And, the HMOs cut their rates for procedures every year. Give me a break yourself - you think it's easy, go get an MD, become board certified and try it yourself. Some people study english lit all their live and never have to hold somebody's blood vessels in their hands...
The quality of service from hospital to hospital varies dramatically. And the blood supply is not trustable.
Speaking of costs and capitalism, there have been some nasty spats between India and US pharmaceuticals companies if I recall correctly. It's not difficult to recreate a drug - the only protection the US companies have is patent law. India baulked at the costs that were demanded, weighed up the choice of letting people die or violating copyright and (good for them) started knocking off the drugs themselves.
What I'm interested in here however is, should more spats happen, will this weaken the pressure that the pharmaceuticals companies apply to doctors. I know that in Britain, GPs (General Practioners) are routinely courted with hotel stays, fancy meals and any other way they can get around the UK's laws on these issues; and from what I've heard they have much greater sway in the US.
So are you less likely to be perscribed something you don't need in India? And if their healthcare is socialised, does that mean the doctor is more likely to have your interests at heart? It looks that way.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
What does the caste system have to do with the topic on hand here! I dont talk about the Wilmington riots and slavery in America when I am talking about brain surgery. Bad things happen here just as bad things happen in America or elsewhere in the West. We have an equivalent problem for every Rodney King there. And why are you suddenly so concerned about the poor in Bombay. Dude, they have been there for the last 50 years and more. And you decide to open your eyes to them now that India is actually starting to make some money and may atlast be acually be able to something about them. You are so hollow. Wake up and face it. We are here and we are not going away.