SHOPPING FOR SURGERY MEDICAL TOURISM TAKES OFF AS SKY HIGH SURGERY PRICES SEND AMERICANS PACKING

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Cut Rate Cutting as Medical Tourism Booms amid Stratospheric Surgery Prices

When it comes to affordable surgery Americans are voting with their feet and their pocketbooks in a phenomenon called medical tourism. You don't need to plow through reams of surgery cost statistics when you read stories like this one about a man from Florida who decided to have his liver transplant surgery in India! Medical tourism is one result of sky high costs for surgery and medical care in the United States. This American man who needed liver transplant surgery checked out a top hospital in South Florida and was told it would cost him 450,000 dollars and he would have to wait a few months to boot! So instead of getting the liver transplant surgery in Florida, he traveled to India where he had the surgery for 58,000 dollars!









An article in the Chicago Tribune highlights what it says is a growing trend of medical tourism. People going outside of the United States for medical treatment and surgery to save money. It compares prices for surgeries between the United States and places like India and Singapore. The price differences for selected surgeries are startling. So for example, a heart bypass surgery in the United States is $130,000 but $10,000 in India and $18,500 in Singapore. An angioplasty in the U.S is $57,000 but $11,000 in India and $13,000 in Singapore. A knee replacement is $40,000 in the U.S but $8,500 in India and $13,000 in Singapore.

WEAK MALPRACTICE LAWS AND FINDING A DOCTOR FOR AFTER CARE IN THE U.S MAY BE A PROBELM

Of course the question is what price you really pay. Do you really know what the qualifications of the surgeon and the hospital are when you go on medical tourism? Is this really the sort of situation where you want to save dollars or is this like flying an airline you never heard of in a foreign country to save money and not knowing about the maintenance? Also the article points out that malpractice laws in many countries are much weaker than in the U.S and if something goes wrong you may be out of luck. And finding a doctor for follow up care in the U.S can be a problem.

Read healty medical Blog Israel and Medical Tourism

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