Healthcare in the US and a unique solution
In my opinion, healthcare in the US is heading towards a major disaster for several reasons: high costs of insurance coverage, co-pays, the nearly 50 million people who don’t even have any coverage and the lack of initiative from anyone in our current government to try to fix some of the problems.
As a result, a new concept called medical tourism has been taking hold. In the past, everyone used to come to the US from around the world to get world-class medical care….now this number is declining. People are now travelling to India, Thailand, Malaysia where they can get the best of care for a reasonable cost. So, over the last few years, the medical tourism concept has really developed into a full-fleged industry.
It’s actually a cool concept that takes advantage of the best doctors, best hospitals, cost effective healthcare in many different countries accross the world! Before, most people would just visit their neighborhood hospital, but now you can actually look for a place that will give you the best healthcare at a price that you can afford. This concept in more common in Asia and Europe, but I anticipate that it will become prevalent in the US within the next 5-10 years; what with the cost of healthcare being so high for those with and without insurance.
Of course with any new industry, there are many players who want to get in on the game. A lot of the companies that offer medical tourism right now are travel companies whose main emphasis is on the tourism aspect. However, I see it completely differently. When you go abroad for surgery, you are not necessarily thinking of taking a vacation. Even minor surgery can be stressful and more so if you are having it done in a different country. So, I decided to form my own medical tourism company, called Global Surgical Solutions, LLC (GSS) where we focus on the healthcare aspect first.
So, I am curious to see what other people think of this medical tourism concept. Is it a good thing or a not?
Published Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 10:58 am and filed under News. Follow Responses via RSS 2.0 Leave a response, or trackback.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:10 am
I agree with the comments. I also predict that as health insurance costs continue to soar and more and more employers design schemes to get out of paying for it all together, healthcare payment system as we know it will be history within 5-7 years. All of us will be responsible to pay for our own health care out of our own pockets. Medical outsourcing is here to stay and will flourish.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:32 am
The ills of our health system are certainly troubling. Unfortunately, I think the health system serves enough people well enough (young, healthy; old, wealthy; govt employees with benefits etc) that the impetus for change is limited. For physicians the astronomic rises in malpractice coupled with the reams of paperwork piled on by insurance companies are making things difficult. That is to say that a lot of cost has little to do with the actual practice of medicine. Sadly physicisans have been complicit in this and must participate in its reversal. Till then, the only viable option for many specialties is to pass on the cost and risk to the patient. Therefore the number of people entertaining “medical tourism” is going to increase. However, my guess is that GSS ought to focus on Europe – at least in the short term. FOr this main reason: The trip to India from Europe is only about 7-8 hours while from the states it is nearly 24 hours worth of travel—this nearly doubles the traveling cost as well. Because of years of socialized medicine that is now giving way a little I think there may be a combination of “waiting times” + possible costs that folks weren’t used to before. If a good quality option in India is possible Europeans will certainly entertain it.