Medical tourism looks to be exploding, growing much faster than many (your author included) had expected. The latest figures indicate a half-million Americans sought care overseas last year.
Much of the care is delivered in Canada and Mexico, but lots of folks are traveling to India and Thailand for complex medical procedures. And the quality appears to be quite high in many of the facilities.
There are a wide array of entities working in this space, from tiny PlanetHospital, (a mom and pop that has sent over 500 patients overseas to date) to Blue Ridge Paper Products to the state of West Virginia to my birthplace, Cyprus.
All are taking advantage of the “arbitrage”, or the difference between the prices here in the States and those in India, Belgium, Thailand, Mexico, the Phillipines, Malaysia, and other countries. The differential is between 20% and 80%, with most stories indicating the total cost of care, including air fare, tourist stops, all medical services and follow up is less than half what it would cost here.
There have been, and will certainly continue to be, protests from health care providers stateside, but don’t expect these protests will become overwhelming. Many of the medical tourists are the uninsured, who could’t afford care here anyway.
Isn’t capitalism, the flattening of the world, and the free market wonderful?
What does this mean for you?
A business opportunity.
Nice comments but we are not a mom & pop operation. We are helping Delegate Canterbury in West Virginia and we were the ones who arranged the first American sponsored by their employer to go abroad for surgery. We are about to send our first client to Cyprus by the way.
In addition to the uninsured, there are people with adequate insurance who seek treatment abroad, for services that their insurance doesn’t cover – cosmetic surgery is a leading example.