Competition From Abroad Is A Wake-up Call for U.S. Healthcare

Oct. 21, 2009 - PRLog -- The great debate over United States healthcare reform continues to move forward as opposing sides argue over the best solution to this nationwide dilemma. Everybody seems to acknowledge that there is definitely something wrong with the current U.S. healthcare system, while proponents of Canadian style socialized medicine are also constantly reminded that it has its flaws as well. In the meantime this free market has found its way for hundreds of thousands from both countries to look at options in developing countries as a means to solve their own particular healthcare needs. This is a wake-up call for all parties involved, policy makers, healthcare providers, insurers and patients alike.

In a recent article published in Newsweek, T.R. Reid states writing about Canadian Health Care “They love to remind us that, while the U.S. lets some 700.000 people go bankrupt due to medical bills each year, the number of medical bankruptcies in Canada is zero” Even if this number is mind-numbing, its consequences are even more impressive: “According to government and private studies, about 22.000 of our fellow Americans die each year of treatable diseases because they lack insurance and can’t afford a doctor.” And even worst of all, he states “This generally happens to people with a chronic illness who have too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to pay for the drugs and treatment they need to stay alive”.

Definitely, this should not be the way things have to happen. The U.S. is the country of competition and free markets, but the healthcare industry, as a service has no substitutes and has faced very little competition so far. With complacent payers, severe litigation laws, and entrepreneurial practitioners, prices have risen more than inflation. We may like it or not, but as an example, our car industry has faced doom because its costs and quality didn’t match foreign automakers. The American consumer gave our cars a chance for years, but at the end did not accept things as they were when better alternatives where present.

Competition is coming to Health Care. As air travel has become cheaper and readily available, high quality and low priced alternatives are springing up everywhere, from Tijuana to Istanbul. All health care services, except only the most highly complex and experimental procedures, are now commonly performed with a high degree of specialization by surgeons and clinics all over the world. Standardization and quality control are allowing international hospitals to provide the same level of care, without sacrificing quality, at prices that are sometimes a fourth of those in the U.S., including travel expenses.

Therefore, the growing conflict between illnesses and citizens, in the choice they have to make between giving up life or economic wellbeing for themselves and their loved ones, has a good alternative. As one of the main Medical Travel destinations, Monterrey, Mexico counts with internationally accredited hospitals and top-notch U.S. trained doctors that are increasingly treating foreign patients from everything ranging from a low cost liposuction to inexpensive weight loss surgeries, and from affordable dental work to knee replacements. Gabriel Senior, Founder of Travel for Care, a Medical Travel firm from Monterrey, Mexico says. “There is a substantive lack of knowledge by U.S. patients and their families about high quality, low cost alternatives for health care. Monterrey has Mexico’s best private healthcare system offering individual patients, and U.S. employers, a close, simple, all-encompassing approach to their needs, with very affordable prices, and the same high quality service, treatments, and procedures that one would expect at a top hospital in the U.S. Unless the U.S. healthcare reform achieves coverage for its millions of uninsured citizens, and until severe litigation laws and other factors keep the prices of elective health care as expensive as they are, Medical Travel will continue as a growing trend in the globalization of health care services.

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Travel For Care is an innovative Medical Travel start-up firm headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico, marketing Medical Solutions to American patients looking for elective and non-elective procedures. For more information, please visit www.travelforcare.com