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My adventures in medical tourism
31–40 of 202 posts
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#32I am originally from India and came to the US 10 years ago. I still can't believe that you can not call up a doctor/clinic/hospital in US and get a price quote for something routine. Chris's experience is representative of what one can expect from the Indian health care system. If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.
Part of the problem is you can thank the stranglehold the AMA has around the US healthcare system to keep the number of doctors artificially low so their salaries remain ridiculously high. Here's another example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-machine-... "Anesthesiologists tried to stop Sedasys. They lobbied against it for years, arguing no machine could possibly replicate their skills or handle…
the stranglehold the AMA has around the US healthcare system to keep the number of doctors artificially low
On the other hand, wages in IT suffer from an overabundance of indentured H1-B labourers, held on the very short leash of the US immigration system. This should demonstrate the importance of union representation, even at the high end of the qualification scale.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#33I should mention that Paul Buchheit wants to fund the Uber of medical tourism: https://twitter.com/paultoo/status/566379518261088258 The tweet: "I want to fund the 'Uber' of medical tourism Needs 5 star service, simplicity and safety Let me know if you apply - http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/" It really has to happen. Health care in the US is just fucked, and everyone knows it.
Well, the "Uber" business model is actually pretty hard to do in an industry as heavily regulated as medicine (and honestly it's a difference between getting into an unrated driver's car or putting yourself under the knife of an unrated developing country's doctor)...
Then again, our friends at Medigo seem to do great service in this direction so far and have just raised a series A ( https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/medigo#/entity ), the competition seems to be heating up in this space and honestly, I can't think of anything to truly "disrupt" this industry, as the margins are pretty well known, the market is reasonably mature and the order volume is very low.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#34Cash friendly places are getting more prevalent in the US, but you have to look for them. For example, one of the hospitals in my area publishes this (very sane) price list: http://swedishhospital.com/patient-financial/?page_name=pric... I go to them. :)
There are urgent care centers that are the less-crazy version of ERs, and a lot of primary care stuff can be done self pay. While I have access to insurance through my work, I vastly prefer the quality of the self pay system. You do need to do some research in advance, but there are some pretty cool innovations out there, and services you just can't get via the insurance system.
http://theselfpaypatient.com/ is a good resource.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#35I am originally from India and came to the US 10 years ago. I still can't believe that you can not call up a doctor/clinic/hospital in US and get a price quote for something routine. Chris's experience is representative of what one can expect from the Indian health care system. If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.
Part of the problem is you can thank the stranglehold the AMA has around the US healthcare system to keep the number of doctors artificially low so their salaries remain ridiculously high. Here's another example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-machine-... "Anesthesiologists tried to stop Sedasys. They lobbied against it for years, arguing no machine could possibly replicate their skills or handle…
I read another article a long while back on how cardiologists used to be paid considerable amounts for their skills in open heart surgery. Then later non-evasive techniques were developed and some of them were not happy because it all became more routine that heroic skills were no longer needed. There is always some degree of thinking what is best for yourself instead of your patient.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#36My wife is a Dentist in Bangalore, India, and it's amazing what I hear. Basically Cost(Flight to india + treatment cost) The more you think about it, the more crazy it seems on multiple levels. Edit, typed .
My wife and I have all our dental work completed in Russia. Not only is it a fraction of the cost, its a no-nonsense experience. An initial consultation in the US costs about as much as the actual dental work performed overseas. It's madness.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#37My wife had some complications after pregnancy. UK and Ireland has GP referral system, where single doctor coordinates all specialists. In theory it is good system. But our GP ignored basic symptoms and pushed bullshit like "depression" or "have you tried acupuncture?". We paid each GP visit, even for saying hi and collecting results, it was obvious GP was just pushing for more visits. This was going on for several m…
This is similar to how the Dutch system works. You normally go to your GP which will refer you to a specialist if required. The problem is that they always want to try a simple treatment first, without investigating thoroughly the causes of the illness. That means that you get sent home with paracetamol and only if you go the 2nd or 3rd time to the GP will you get sent to the specialist. My friend developed a type of…
This bugs me a lot, as I don't seek medical attention unless I damn well need it. The GPs will just tell you to take it easy, eat some paracetamol and come back in 2-3 weeks if it's still an issue.
I understand the desire to not spend resources on hypochondriacs, but the last time I heard that from my doctor I ended up being admitted to the intensive care unit at the hospital the next day with meningitis. According to the doctors there, I could have died if I'd waited a bit longer.
Needless to say, I don't feel as confident in our healtcare system after that.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#38I am originally from India and came to the US 10 years ago. I still can't believe that you can not call up a doctor/clinic/hospital in US and get a price quote for something routine. Chris's experience is representative of what one can expect from the Indian health care system. If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.
In addition to what itg said, another is that with various insurers the doctors and even the billing people do not actually know what you'll pay . They know what the service costs them to perform (irrelevant to what is charged to the consumer), they know what they're going to bill the insurer (a grossly inflated number that is a big cause of these massive 6-figure bills you see to uninsured folks), but they have no i…
Many doctors don't even know what they'll bill, as it's different per-insurer, etc. Their back-office staff certainly can look it up, but docs don't know the numbers.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#39One thing I've never understood about the US system is why do the doctors charge more for paying cash e.g. $200 for a visit, whereas insurance reimburses them less than half e.g. $80. In everything else e.g. car repairs, the cash price is always lower than insurance covered price. Any ideas why this is so?
Insurance companies contract with providers and set reimbursement levels. An insurance company might go to a hospital and say "we'll pay 30% of your chargemaster rates". So when a patient has surgery that costs $50,000, the insurance company shells out $15,000.
If you don't have insurance, you just pay the chargemaster rate. Keep in mind this is negotiable.
Re: My adventures in medical tourism
#40I am originally from India and came to the US 10 years ago. I still can't believe that you can not call up a doctor/clinic/hospital in US and get a price quote for something routine. Chris's experience is representative of what one can expect from the Indian health care system. If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.
Part of the problem is you can thank the stranglehold the AMA has around the US healthcare system to keep the number of doctors artificially low so their salaries remain ridiculously high. Here's another example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-machine-... "Anesthesiologists tried to stop Sedasys. They lobbied against it for years, arguing no machine could possibly replicate their skills or handle…
Other notable problems with our medical system would be the RBRVS[1] and Nixon's scheme to limit hospital competition[2].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-based_relative_value_...