Sad State of Affairs
Jul 30th, 2006 at 2:58 pm by Susie
Oh, great. We’re sending people to India for surgery because their employers can’t afford it here? No reflection on India, but the last thing I’d want after surgery is the stress of a transcontinental flight:
Some medical tourism agencies are preparing to offer health insurance plans that outsource all major surgeries abroad. IndUSHealth — a medical tourism agency based in Raleigh, N.C., that Blue Ridge hired — said it was in negotiations with several companies.
Earlier this year, United Group Programs Inc., a health plan manager in Boca Raton, Fla., added a Thai hospital to its network of preferred providers. A handful of plan members have traveled to Thailand for treatment in recent months.
Arnold Milstein, chief physician at human resources consulting giant Mercer Health & Benefits, said he had been hired by three Fortune 500 companies interested in contracting with offshore hospitals. Milstein said the employers requested anonymity because they were not ready to unveil plans to their workers.
“This could really open up the healthcare market to foreign medical travel,” said Milstein, who is based in San Francisco. “It won’t just be people without insurance anymore. It could be available to just about everybody.”
U.S. hospital operators say that doesn’t bode well for them.
“This is not the solution,” said California Hospital Assn. spokeswoman Jan Emerson. “In fact, this could make problems worse.”
Hospitals must deal with rising costs just like other parts of the healthcare system, she said, and California hospitals lost $6.65 billion last year caring for the uninsured. Hospitals rely on paying, well-insured patients to keep them afloat in the face of costly government regulations and low-paying government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, she said.
Exporting the best-paying patients, she said, “will only add to the woes of the entire healthcare system.”
Somehow I can’t shed a tear for the hospitals. I bet their administrators didn’t miss a paycheck. I bet none of them overbilled Medicare. Their business plans call for every one of them having the same multi-million dollar machines. Let the off shoring of surgeries succeed and they can change their model and be in business to help patients instead of the bottom line.
I can’t shed a tear either. I’ve only had one hospitalization, & the shoddiness of the care and malice of the nurses, coupled with uncaring doctors, almost killed me, to no one’s consternation but mine. And, despite what is laughably termed my “great health insurance,” the hospital overbilled on everything. I had to spend many, many hours on the phone with them & the ins. co. to get corrections, instead of being able to rest and heal and “avoid stress.” Ha!
Best medical education system in the world.