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Medical Care Gets Outsourced Too
Muppy writes "Here's the summary from the most emailed article in The Washington Post today -- about an American who went to India for heart surgery, which he could never have afforded here. U.S.: $200,000 total cost ($50,000 deposit required) for heart operation. India: $10,000 total bill, including hospital, air fare, and a side trip to the Taj Mahal. And the Indian doctors are probably at least as good as those one is likely to get in the U.S. From the article: 'Eager to cash in on the trend, posh private hospitals are beginning to offer services tailored for foreign patients, such as airport pickups, Internet-equipped private rooms and package deals that combine, for example, tummy-tuck surgery with several nights in a maharajah's palace...'"
"Thank you...come again.!"
Now we don't have to worry about having doctor's in the US anymore, also... we can just get on a plane and go to India for medical care.
Add sarcasm tags where appropriate.
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
Places like india and south africa end up supplying plenty doctors to western countries and i'd feel pretty confident that they'd do a good job.
Makes me wonder why someone doesn't just get a ship anchored in international waters off the coast of california to offer similar cut price procedures.
As someone who has had three open-heart surgeries due to a congenital heart defect, I can see this as a viable option if I ever have to have another surgery. I've had my aortic valve rebuilt once (valvoplasty) and had it fall apart, replaced with a Hancock prosthesis (pig's valve) which calcified when I went through a growth spurt at 16, and then had it replaced with a Saint Jude's valve. I've been ticking (literally) for the past 22 years. Yes, I had my brother tell me that I am like a Timex watch :->
My first surgery cost about $5,000 (in 1969); the second about $30,000 (in 1976), and over $80,000 (in 1982). You can thank the insurance companies for the cost of health care today. Malpractice insurance for doctors and surgeons in the USA can top $1,000,000 a year depending on their area of practice. The more delicate the organ they work on, the more they pay. In order to stay in practice, they have to charge the patient more. The patient's insurance company pays more, they raise the cost of the insurance, someone sues the doctor for leaving a sponge in them, their malpractice insurance rates go up, etc.
IANAL and I don't know about India's legal system, but I don't think they have the sue-for-every-mistake mentality we do here. Remember, doctors are people too and they sometimes make mistakes. If they doctors in India can do as good a job as the ones in the USA at a lower cost, I'll be traveling overseas if I have to have another surgery.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The USA already outspends Germany and Japan per student. The problem isn't that we spend too little, it's that the money gets pissed away on administrative costs instead of compensating teachers adequately. Add to that the NEA's tooth-and-nail resistance to anything resembling competition or accountability, and you get the mess that is American primary education today.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The school district here, decided that it was a good idea to spend several million dollars for football field upgrades. Until we decide that education has a higher importance in our EDUCATIONAL system than playing games, we are screwed.
I haven't seen a school yet that hires an economics teacher, and has them fill in as a coach, but they all seem to be fine with hiring a coach and asking them to fill in as an economics teacher.
Do not mix price and quality. Higher price doesn't necessarily mean higher quality.
Free XBox, PS2
AMERICANS wake UP! This is what happens in countries that have socialist medicine and it's coming here! Yes we have big problems with the cost of health care here that need to be fixed but the solution is not to do what they do in the UK and Canada.
1. Healthcare is expensive in the US because of high malpractice insurance. ... Moreover, he added, a New York heart surgeon "has to pay $100,000 a year in malpractice insurance.
From the article: Trehan, 58, a former assistant professor at New York University Medical School who said he earned nearly $2 million a year from his Manhattan practice
This guy was making $2mil a year, and paying $100K for MI; just 5%.
2. Doctors there are bad
The founder (as quoted above) was an Asst Prof at NYU, making $2M a year. In fact, a lot of the doctors you find here (in the US) are graduates from the same Indian schools. And many of them working at these top hospitals are those who returned from US/UK. You'll find a good number of them holding advanced degrees (like FRCS) from institutions in US/UK. A good friend of mine (an Indian who finished his residency here) is going back because he couldn't get into the top school he wanted for research. He has his choice of places where he can practice, but he prefers to go back because he says "if I'm going to practice, might as well do it at home". There, the good doctors are put on a pedestal and have a lot of clout in society.
3. Facilities are bad
The hospital mentioned, Escorts, is top-notch and was founded by an Asst Prof at NYU who gave up a $2M/yr package to go back. Here's another quote from the article: Escorts is one of only a handful of treatment facilities worldwide that specialize in robotic surgery,
4. Quality of care will be bad .8 percent. By contrast, the 1999 death rate for the same procedure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where former president Bill Clinton recently underwent bypass surgery, was 2.35 percent, according to a 2002 study by the New York State Health Department.
From the article: the death rate for coronary-bypass patients at Escorts is
5. It is cheap because it is bad
Again, from the article: For example, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan costs $60 at Escorts, compared with roughly $700 in New York
I will relate a personal story. A very good friend of mine hurt his back (slipped disk) while travelling in India in 1997. He had to be hospitalised, and operated upon. After operation, he got 1 month of in-home nursing care. The total bill? $4000.
When he came back, he told his insurance company about this. They asked him to go to a local doctor. He checked him out, and said that the job the Indian doctors had done was as good as anything they would have done locally. And the insurance company paid the $4K even though he hadn't followed procedure (called them and sought approval), saying that just the MRI alone here would have cost $4K. There, the MRI, surgery, post-operative care, etc. all came at the price of just an MRI here.
The percentage of people who have the personal resources to personally pay for the worst case health problems is in the low single digits. That means that health care gets rationed here in the USA, too. It's just a different system; people who have full-time jobs at large corporations usually get first priority. (Why does the size of your employer have anything to do with health care? Who knows.) Then come the perfectly healthy people who are allowed to buy individual policies, and people who work at small employers where none of their coworkers are too sick to lose the group plan. Lowest in the rationing pecking order are uninsured who rely on emergency room triage.
Oh, I forgot that half of the healthcare in this country is fully socialized. It's just for everyone who is old enough to get on medicare so that they can get free coveraged paid for by those of us who actually have to work (but don't get to actually benefit from the socialized healthcare we pay for ourselves).
At the end of the day, almost nobody is actually directly paying for their healthcare in the US anyway.
You are absolutely right. I used to sell health insurance and I am currently CTO of a company that provides medical practice automation software (which includes claims processing).
When I have had to pay for my own health insurance I get a policy with at least a $5,000 deductible and high maximum benefit. I also open an MSA (Medical Savings Account). That way I pay for my family's routine visits out of my own pocket (cheaper than comprehensive insurance over the course of a year) and I am still protected against a major medical catastrophe.
The next layer to add to this is to, before telling the MD you'll be paying cash, ask if you can get a discount for cash. Sometimes (often?) you can since, on average, it saves the MD about 20% to not have to go through the claims process.
The result is a health insurance set up which is portable and relatively affordable.