There are even road shows to promote tourism. Insurance companies and hospitals alike are meeting on the topic. Countries like New Zealand and Israel have entered the market. Mexico is building hospitals for medical tourism. Tourism creates shortages in Thailand for regular citizens. In Texas, many are going to Mexico.
There was a website a while back that is no longer in existence, but the site basically was a bidding site for the patient, put your surgery up for bid and see what came back, and perhaps it was a little too early for it's time and we might see something along these lines emerge again. Here's an example of someone "brokering" surgeries online today between the US and Canada.
Also from the Wall Street Journal:
"After the announcement, I got calls from several [U.S.] hospitals offering to match Singapore on pricing," says Peter Hayes, Hannaford's director of associate health and wellness.
Hannaford, which is self-insured and therefore pays the medical claims of its 9,000 covered employees out of its own funds, tapped Aetna Inc., which manages its health benefits, to vet the U.S. hospitals."
Will surgical procedures end up being commodities? It sure appears to be off to a running start here. Will we someday need a broker for a procedure? Contracts for some, and for those without contracts, go to a broker? The healthcare system gets more complicated by the minute, and it all revolved around money here in the US, and we seem to have lost our focus somewhere along the line with better healthcare, folks are still getting fatter, diabetes is still on the rise, and we still are looking at pay for performance for physicians? What's up with this broken system? Is there no end to complicating the issues even further? As long as cost drives the issues instead of a true commitment for better healthcare, it looks like we are passing the point of no return. BD
Now some employers are finally taking advantage of the price discrepancies by sending their workers across the country to get care that costs less and has comparable or better quality than at hospitals close to home, the WSJ reports. Its another wrinkle in the phenomenon of medical tourism, usually an overseas affair. Employers just threatening to send employees overseas for care has prompted some domestic hospitals to step up with offers to match the foreign prices. Supermarket chain Hannaford Bros, based in Maine, offered employees the option of getting hip and knee replacements at a hospital in Singapore. A hip replacement there costs about $43,000 in the U.S. compared with $9,000 in Singapore, WSJ writes
0 comments :
Post a Comment