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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).
Free curry on your 3rd bypass.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
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...
Not to knock the healing hands in India, but I just can't snicker at the thought of my HMO telling me that they've outsourced my hip replacement to the cousin of the guy who replaced my job as a programmer.
--- have you healed your church website?
I hate to admit it, but they do have a point. Savings can be had by lower paying doctors, nurses, facility costs, you also get to eliminate malpractice suits. Real savings with the last one. Your real cost will be to ship the patient back and forth (around $800 to $1200).
Hmm, Im torn between feeling bad for doctors/nurses, and happy that there will be less need for lawyers.
later,
epic
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
This is in stark contrast to the jerk who 'helped' me in SF. "Yeah, drink a lot of water. That'll be $400"
It didn't work so well for my friend Mr. McGregg, with a leg for an arm, and an arm for a leg.
So you go to Bombay to get a kidney
removed and they remove the healthy one.
Can you sue them for malpractice a-la US?
I'm afraid not.
I read that some HMO's are sending xrays
and cat-scans to india for diagnosis via
internet.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
After spending any time in India (for medical treatment especially), this is a must.
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
all parents tell they children that when they'll grow up they'll be doctors. Of course they say that thinking about how a doctor can make and not on how important and honorable (at least it was) to be a doctor.
... give me a break ... Some people study during all their lifes and don't make the money some surgeons make in a couple of days.
Several Med. freshman are not worried about saving lives and helping people, just to get out of the hospital with a Mercedez in the way to their house in the beach. Sometime they say that it is expensive because they had to study for 10 years to be a doctor
Some concepts must be reviwed.
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.
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!
90% of the physical products you buy will be built in China, and possibly designed there too.
90% of the services you use will be provided by India.
It's ironic that the West leads in one main field, namely agriculture, which should have been outsourced a long time ago were it not for the farming lobbies.
There is no moral to this story except that everything you use and buy - except food - will get cheaper and cheaper.
The staff at my family doctor's office has already been replaced by immigrants from India! I guess that saves me a lot of money on a plane ticket! Wait a minute...
I personally welcome this. Maybe it's because of the bad taste left in my mouth by seeing the local orthodontist brag about how he only worked a couple hours a week, right before he jumped into his multi-million dollar Mitsubishi turbo-prop. My mom just paid several thousand dollars to have a root canal/tooth cap.
Perhaps it's not the best bet for open heart, but for some of the more insanely priced operations like that I think it make senses.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
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."
This is more a problem of OUR system, than anything better about theirs. I've got a cheaper solution: Build a Cruise-Ship/Hospital and park it 4+ miles offshore, offer first class medical help without all the US bullshit... you could cruise up and down the shore and hit more locations.
meh
My mother went through angioplasty at the Escorts Heart Research Institute (New Delhi, India, http://www.ehirc.com/). Not only did the operation go smoothly, the total cost of the whole procedure (including stay, doctor's fee, consultations, actual procedure, angiography etc) came to under $4000. Out of this $2000 was for the medicated stent used, which is imported from the US.
(PS: This particular hospital performs over 20 angioplasties and around 8 bypass surgeries daily)
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I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
Do I need to point out Bombay is called Mumbai? Sort of a Instanbul/Constantinople thing.
See this page for information.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
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
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 ;)
Medical Tourists.
It's official, we live in a wierd science fictional dystopian society. "Medical tourists", It sounds like a term akin to "Organ Leggers" from Niven's Known Space. Go back, oh, 20 years and speak the term "Medical Tourist" and people wouldv'e given you blank stares. Not to long from now they will say, "Had my hip done in India, and my plastic surgery in Mexico."
Since we live in a sci-fi world, I can't wait to get fitted for my one piece jumpsuit, and eating my soma infused soylent big brother.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
People are already being shipped abroad (not to india, but france the netherlands etc.) in Britain for treatment because the NHS cannot cope with the number of patients on the waiting lists. Also some are travelling to countries like Poland for cheap cosmetic surgery.
Operations can and do go wrong and its not much good if your surgion is half way around the world when you get rushed into hospital. Also hospitals do plan for readmittance, which obviously they cannot do unless you are treated by them.
Also I'm sure I don't need to spell out the problems that will be encountered if the patient needs ongoing treatment.
In the UK when private operations go wrong the patient often gets dumped on the National Health Service.
P.S. If you want my opinion, the US could do a lot worse than get itself a National Health Service. Access to healthcare should not be based on the ability to pay or what is covered on your insurance policy (if you can afford one.)
Philip
Signatures are broken
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.
I have a question that may look like a troll, but I'd like some real thoughts. I assume that hospital visits, operations, etc cost so much because of how much the hospitals must pay for their equipment. So, are there any ideas why hospital equipment costs so much? I thought I heard MRI's run in the hundreds of thousands. Heck, Maine has a mobile MRI bus.
But even with this taken into consideration, hospital visits that don't touch any expensive machines are still very expensive. Is this to lower the cost of visits that do use expensive equipment? I still think this is explanation is on shaky ground as a $500,000 MRI might be used several thousand times. Does it really cost that much more for upkeep?
Thanks for any info on this matter. It just doesn't seem correct.
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...)
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
The problem is, India faces major food shortages right now. They can't wait for outsourcing to bring them the money they need. That is where my proposal comes in.
If we ship overfed American women to India, and then import the unfortunate, thin, and quite lovely Indian women back to the USA, we will finally have achieved social justice. Thank You.
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.
Beleive me, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and other East Europeans countries have much better dentinst then States. The quality of work is excellent (once American materials became available). Don't forget that these dentists are trained as full MD first and then spend three years specializing in dentistry.
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.
Pay lawyer fees and awarded lawsuit damages in Indian Rupees.
There are certain pieces of medical equipment which cannot be exported outside of the US. Should doctors in India require these pieces of equipment for some ultramodern procedure, they may not be able to perform such procedures. I suppose this is what law makers and HMO execs would be chirping about when it comes around to this - Don't worry about these "low-level" jobs going offshore, we still have the "high-tech" stuff here to fill the niche!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
There are US hospitals which send their MRI images electronically to Indian companies which have a 24/7 staff of radiologists to interpret the images and send back the results. It is supposedly cheaper and faster according to a television show I saw, can't recall the show, it may have been on Tech TV. I do believe medical regulatory boards consisting of US doctors are going to make decisions which benefit US doctors. If the outsourcing trend became a major threat, I believe US doctors would employ some type of regulatory action to justify halting the trend. Doctors have had positions of status and wealth in the US for a long time and I don't think they are going to allow that positions slip away without a hard fight.
My mom goes down to Nicaragua pretty regularly with a civic group...the last trip she had a filling replaced by a dentist down there. She said it was the most pleasant dental visit of her life, and it cost $25...so it's not just India where things are going to be exported to.
as a practicing ob/gyn, i hope they outsource some lawyers. preferably to antartica.
there are some things that can't be outsourced still. trauma surgery and the Burger King Drive-through, for example
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
4 "years" of Med school (typically 2-3x the work load of what most colleges will limit students)
3-6 "years" of residency (again working 80-130 hrs/week - one-two days off a month so it's equivalent to 10-15 years job experience)
Most surgeons I know work 80 hours/week(think of it as 2 jobs) and are on beeper call 24/7 to their patients, except on rare ocasions.
..........FULL STOP.
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.
Come on guy, get real! The few bucks they give out to entice people to give blood is hardly something that generates personal proffit. As a U.S. resident for the last 33 years I've yet to see these "baby stores" or "womb rentals" you speak of.
In my experience of working in three different countries, there are three kinds of people:
9 /10761751 05694.htmlo ries/2004021301210400.htm
1. People who work very hard and are heads and shoulders above others in productivity. There are very few such people.
2. People who work hard and are productive.
3. People who are seat-warmers. According to something I read yesterday, perhaps at slashdot, 71% of American workforce is like that, but I don't believe it.
The above three kinds of people exist everywhere, irrespective of the country.
That India didn't build up an infrastructure has nothing to do with lack of work or otherwise of Indians. It has something to do with bottled-up economy, the license-permit regime and several other factors. Now that this regime is in the process of being dismantled, infrastructure is being built rapidly.
* See, for example, http://surajsphotos.fotopic.net/ for images of new roads and buildings being built in India.
* Go to www.nhai.org, the website of National Highways authority of India to look at other projects.
* Go to http://www.delhimetrorail.com/home/index.htm, to see how the Delhi Metro Rail project has made strides in the past years.
* Here is some more about building of infrastructure in India:
- AMP to raise $129m for India fund venture
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/0
- http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/02/13/st
New Delhi , Feb. 12
THE country is poised for a grey revolution with the construction sector entering a boom phase to meet the demand for new highways, ports and real estate, according to the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley.
----
If you are interested, I can give you more news about the boom in infrastructure development in India.
If Indians weren't hard-working, why would this be occurring?
If you pedal a bicycle rickshaw throughout a hot, dusty day ferrying passengers for a few cents, aren't you working hard?
If you work in fields, sowing and harvesting while the temperatures rise to 50 degree celsius, isn't that hard work?
If you hawk your wares on a bicycle or a cart amidst dense traffic, immense noise for a life time, isn't that hard work?
If you sit by roadside breaking stones with primitive pickaxes day after day, isn't that hard work?
And this is not specific to India, most developing countries have such work, and most developed countries too have the equivalent. Most humans are hard working.
I've got ferrets. I'd be happy to let one help you eradicate that ear wax for $40! They seem to go for that sort of thing... They'll also clear out any boogers you have (This would make a great Dave Barry feature...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
Discovery channel now announce the latest program for the next season: "Iron Surgeons" where top surgeons compete against challengers to do complex operations in the least amount of time.
I'd consider your rant to be a typical one for clueless anticorporate types.
3 832 ) and general health degradation in the US caused insurance to experience losses.
HMO is a desperate (and failing) attempt to control skyrocketing medical costs. Traditional system includes the insurance company and doctors as separate entities with the doctor making any decisions they want and insurance just footing the bill.
Unfortunately, newer expensive treatments ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96859&cid=828
So, they decided to hire their own doctors and put them through the cost-control through the approval of procedures.
Eventually many other non-HMO companies followed suit. They now need to approve certain medical procedures beforehand, otherwise the doctor is not getting reimbursed.
Even despite all of this crap, the costs for the customers (i.e., these who pay premiums for the healthcare) continue growing. Major cause: expensive drugs and more people requiring them permanently.
To the contrary to the popular belief, lawsuits are not he culprit of the major cost rise at the medical insurance level, but they greatly affect doctors themselves and their malpractice insurance causing many doctors to drop out of practice in certain litigious areas.
P.S. I used to contract at a small healthplan company.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
...whilst millions go begging for health care in India, wealthy foreigners can buy first calss care.
The same thing is happening in Australia.
Whiltst many young Australians miss a chance at a tertiary education every year, wealthy foreigners can buy a place in a degree course. Lower standards for fee paying students extend to 'no fail' policies.
It is scandalous but still the government of the day sails on...
It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.
In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.
Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....
- A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.
[Foreign Correspondent, ABC, India a big Heart, aired: 18/02/2003]peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup