Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Medical NAFTA?
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Old 08-26-2009, 05:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna View Post
So much has been said about the need to reduce healthcare costs in the U.S., whether or not tort reform will work, fraudulent insurance billing, and on and on. I was listening to the radio today and heard a fellow from Los Angeles interviewed about his experience getting some dental work done. It reminded me of some other medical situations and it made me wonder whether there's room for these ideas in the whole healthcare reform, cost reduction effort.

The fellow I heard interviewed related the story of getting estimates for a complicated dental procedure from two different dentists in the LA area. The range of the estimates was from $35,000 to $39,000. His further research lead him to a well-qualified dental center in Tijuana, Mexico, no more than a 2 block walk from the border station. He said he got his dental work done there for a fee of $3,900. The work was done by a dentist and her assistant who were both educated in the U.S.--at the USC and UCLA medical centers. Both the dentist and nurse spoke perfect English, without any Spanish accent. He described the offices as spotless and equipped with equipment as modern as any he had ever seen. The offices held many dentists and dental surgeons and specialists and all seemed similarly equipped. He observed that the clientele were almost exclusively Americans. He reported that the dental work he had done was perfect and he couldn't be happier with the results.

I was reminded of other news reports I have seen on huge hospitals located in Indonesia, staffed with American-educated and trained doctors and nurses and which perform even the most advanced surgeries at a fraction of the cost of the same procedures in U.S. hospitals. One report showed a patient getting as hip transplant. She had her own personal nurse for the days she was in the hospital in a private room, and her rehab was performed at nearby facility that had all the features of a top-of-the-line resort--beaches, pools, massage therapists, rehab specialists, fine restaurants, gourmet dining, the works. A week of post-op rehab was included in the already low price of the surgery. The report said that this hospital--it was in Bangkok, I believe--was already bigger than any U.S. hospital, and growing!

If excellent medical and dental care is available outside the U.S., provided by U.S.-educated and trained doctors and dentists, in facilities comparable to anything in this country, all for a fraction of the cost here, should we integrate such care into our own healthcare system? It would likely be far cheaper if Medicare and our private insurance companies simply paid for a plane ticket to the foreign hospitals and went on to pay the significantly lower fee. There is reportedly very little defensive medicine practiced in these foreign hospitals because foreign patients are precluded from litigating against the foreign medical personnel and hospitals. But yet the results being reported are equal to if not better than being achieved here in the U.S. It sounds like costs would go down dramatically and the quality of care might even be an improvement over that available here.

Maybe Congress should be talking about the equivalent of a "healthcare NAFTA". Maybe not even Congress. Other than Medicare, which is government-controlled, why not the private insurers simply steering patients from the U.S. to treatment in foreign countries?

Anything wrong with this picture? It works in many, many other industries where high quality products and services can be provided at lower cost outside the U.S. Cars, trucks, electronics, airplanes, building materials, tools, even telephone customer service are more efficiently manufactured or provided by foreign suppliers. It's not like it's a new concept. If the costs of healthcare and drugs here in the U.S. continue to escalate at unsustainable rates, we may be headed in the direction of foreign-provided healthcare anyway.

Why not healthcare? It sounds like it could be an excellent idea which would make the care of U.S. citizens affordable again. And maybe even improve the quality of care and the resultant health of the population.

Can anyone make an argument on why this is a bad idea? Or if anyone thinks it is a bad idea, then how can we provide the same high quality healthcare at lower costs here at home? The free market seems to be telling us that our healthcare, like many other products and services we use, is headed offshore.
There has been "medical NAFTA" for a long time now. Usually it has been the other way around, with people coming from other countries, some that have a national health care system that doesn't work for them, and others that came for our superior health care.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on if one is isolationist or not, our life experience has evolved into a more global experience, due to the shrinking world of communication and commerce. We are now able to scan the globe for goods and services that we want. We are now only one of many countries where quality health care is available. The risks and protections of our system are not universally applicable, unfortunately, and this has to be considered when buying goods or services outside our own country.

If we want or need health care that is either cheaper, faster or better in another country, we have the opportunity do so, but as always "buyer beware". You may not like the results and will have no or little recourse in resolving a legal dispute.

A government style NAFTA for health care, with it's inherent bureaucracy and costs, is not a good option.