The law will extend health insurance to 32 million Americans who currently have none. It will bar practices including insurance companies refusing coverage or renewal to people with pre-existing medical conditions, expand the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor, and will require employers and individuals to obtain health coverage. There will be tax rebates for those who obey, heavy tax fines for those who refuse, and help for the poor and low paid.

Health reform will offer major changes in the arena of dental care with a lasting effect on the type of dental care that people receive. Millions more will have dental insurance- and this could have an impact on dental tourism. There promises to be a huge expansion of coverage for individuals in need of dental care. The healthcare reform bill looks very promising for people who have long awaited adequate coverage for their dental needs.

The passage of President Obama’s health care reform will make a difference in the lives of tens of millions of people. The subsidies will make insurance affordable to millions of families who could not pay the unsubsidized rate. By prohibiting insurers from discriminating against people with serious health conditions, people will no longer have to worry that a serious illness will cause them to lose their job and then their insurance.

The effect on medical tourism will not be immediate, as the major measures only take effect in 2014. But overseas governments, promotional bodies, agencies and overseas hospitals whose business model is based on attracting some of the 47 million uninsured Americans, and based on the belief that US healthcare reform would fail just as it has in the last 40 years will need a dramatic rethink. It will certainly not be the end of US outbound medical tourism, but it is worth noting that even the latest scaled down medical tourism forecasts from Deloitte had the very important qualification that these figures assumed healthcare reform would not happen.

Using figures produced for the legislation illustrating where the US will be in 2019:
• 159 million covered by employer health insurance plans
• 44 million on state programs
• 25 million covered by individual or small business insurance
• 24 million covered in the exchanges
• 22 million left uninsured.

The uninsured category has gone from the second largest to the smallest, and as the fines by 2019 will be around $800 for each person in the family, the numbers may be far smaller. This uninsured segment will not be a medical tourism target as it includes 8 million illegal immigrants. The rest will mostly be those excluded from cover as they earn too little, or opted out, so have no money for any medical treatment anywhere.

Insurance exchanges will be created in which small businesses and individuals without employer-sponsored coverage can shop for coverage. Plans offered on the exchange have to meet minimum benefit requirements. There are already guidelines on the pre-agreed range of insurances on offer, with no mention of allowing overseas treatment.

The reforms do not solve the basic problem that health care in the United States is expensive. Suggestions that reform will fail as demand will outstrip available resources are just ridiculous. There will be strict controls on what insurers can exclude and new minimum standards on cover and benefit levels. These in turn will drastically reduce the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans.

Initial optimistic reactions from the medical tourism market have been on the basis of the headlines, rather than detailed proposals that are still emerging. There are many views on how reform will affect medical tourism. Some argue it will increase medical tourism, others that it will decrease medical tourism. A few even suggest it will increase the volume of medical tourism from Europe to the USA.

Reform will change the ground rules for those targeting Americans, and anyone looking for US business will have to study the reforms in detail and show that they understand the implications. The American insurance industry will become more powerful with an extra 32 million customers by 2019. Anyone hoping to convince insurers that they should pay for medical tourism will have to be armed with detailed figures, quality outcomes, employer and employee incentives, aftercare proposals and answers on how insurers can avoid medical malpractice suits. A simplistic approach based on cost savings overseas will achieve very little.

source: imtjonline.com

As I wrote in yesterday’s column, there are plenty of Americans (including Rush Limbaugh) looking overseas now that the United States is undergoing the most dramatic change ever in the history of its health care system.

“We anticipate medical tourism to increase,” Renee-Marie Stephano, president of the Medical Tourism Association, told the Tico Times. “More people will have access to health insurance (in the United States), but you are going to see an increase in the underinsured.”

Essentially, medical tourism is the practice of traveling beyond your home country’s borders to seek medical care in another nation — usually at a much lower cost. This is especially true for surgeries not typically covered by health insurance, such as cosmetic procedures like facelifts and breast augmentation.

Dozens of countries officially recognize medical tourism as a national industry, and many overseas hospitals offer five-star care, such as Bumrungrad in Bangkok, Thailand.

Michael Quirós, who heads the Medical Tourism Association’s Latin American division, agrees with Stephano that health care reform in the United States will benefit the medical tourism industry.

“Outside of the United States, medical care is less expensive – in some areas, five or six times so,” he told the Tico Times. “Insurance companies and employers recognize the price differential and will encourage patients to seek attention abroad.

“I think the health reform is 100 percent positive for the medical tourism industry.”

Experts estimate that medical tourism is a $20 billion-a-year industry – a figure that’s expected to grow to $100 billion by 2012. There are no figures for the number of Dallas/Fort Worth residents who seek care abroad, but 500,000 to 750,000 Americans travel beyond the USA’s borders each year to seek medical treatment.

source: examiner.com

Well, you can be like talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and move to Costa Rica as a way of protesting the new law. Better yet, you can combine your love of travel with your need for medical care by experiencing medical tourism.

Essentially, medical tourism is the practice of traveling beyond your home country’s borders to seek medical care in another nation — usually at a much lower cost. This is especially true for surgeries not typically covered by health insurance, such as cosmetic procedures like facelifts and breast augmentation.

Dozens of countries officially recognize medical tourism as a national industry, and many overseas hospitals offer five-star care, such as Bumrungrad in Bangkok, Thailand.

How much can you save? Here are some eye-popping numbers, courtesy of the University of Delaware:

“The cost of surgery in India, Thailand or South Africa can be one-tenth of what it is in the United States or Western Europe, and sometimes even less. A heart-valve replacement that would cost $200,000 or more in the U.S., for example, goes for $10,000 in India — and that includes round-trip airfare and a brief vacation package. Similarly, a metal-free dental bridge worth $5,500 in the U.S. costs $500 in India, a knee replacement in Thailand with six days of physical therapy costs about one-fifth of what it would in the States, and Lasik eye surgery worth $3,700 in the U.S. is available in many other countries for only $730. Cosmetic surgery savings are even greater: A full facelift that would cost $20,000 in the U.S. runs about $1,250 in South Africa.”

Medical tourists from Dallas/Fort Worth and all across America are headed to such countries as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Turkey, Argentina, Brunei, Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Korea, Tunisia and New Zealand.

That’s just a partial list. But medical tourism is so popular now that even tiny Latvia is getting in on the act. The former Soviet bloc country wants to be the go-to destination for Lasik eye surgery and other fountain-of-youth procedures.

source: examiner.com

What we also should stop to think about is the mindset behind this legislation, which is very consistent with the mindset behind other policies of this administration, whether the particular issue is bailing out General Motors, telling banks who to lend to or appointing “czars” to tell all sorts of people in many walks of life what they can and cannot do.

The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity.

What they are trying to do is to create an America very unlike the America that has existed for centuries — the America that people have been attracted to by the millions from every part of the world, the America that many generations of Americans have fought and died for.

This is the America for which Michelle Obama expressed her resentment before it became politically expedient to keep quiet.

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It is the America that Reverend Jeremiah Wright denounced in his sermons during the 20 years when Barack Obama was a parishioner, before political expediency required Obama to withdraw and distance himself.

The thing most associated with America — freedom — is precisely what must be destroyed if this is to be turned into a fundamentally different country to suit Obama’s vision of the country and of himself. But do not expect a savvy politician like Barack Obama to express what he is doing in terms of limiting our freedom.

He may not even think of it in those terms. He may think of it in terms of promoting “social justice” or making better decisions than ordinary people are capable of making for themselves, whether about medical care or housing or many other things. Throughout history, egalitarians have been among the most arrogant people.

Obama has surrounded himself with people who also think it is their job to make other people’s decisions for them. Not just Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, his health care advisor who complains of Americans’ “over-utilization” of medical care, but also Professor Cass Sunstein, who has written a whole book on how third parties should use government power to “nudge” people into making better decisions in general.

Then there are a whole array of Obama administration officials who take it as their job to pick winners and losers in the economy and tell companies how much they can and cannot pay their executives.

Just as magicians know that the secret of some of their tricks is to distract the audience, so politicians know that the secret of many political tricks is to distract the public with scapegoats.

No one is more of a political magician than Barack Obama. At the beginning of 2008, no one expected a shrewd and experienced politician like Hillary Clinton to be beaten for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States by someone completely new to the national political scene. But Obama worked his political magic, with the help of the media, which he still has.

Barack Obama’s escapes from his own past words, deeds and associations have been escapes worthy of Houdini.

Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well. The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success.

Saints are no more common in the insurance industry than in politics or even among paragons of virtue like economists. So there will always be horror stories, even if these are less numerous or less horrible than what is likely to happen if Obamacare gets passed into law.

Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to “keep insurance companies honest” — and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest. Certainly most of the media are unlikely to point out this irony.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell082109.php3

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Oh, but it is.

It is about him because it is his vision that has given us a so-called stimulus of staggering size and dubious value. It is his instincts that guide him to sacrifice the American economy on the altar of climatological junk science. It was his wish to run General Motors.

As with other issues, the cost to taxpayers is an annoying side issue that he and his administration simply do not want to be bothered with. Their attitude is a wave-off: How can you pester us with those trifles when we’re trying to do something titanic here?

And “titanic” is a fitting adjective, since much of what makes the American health care system the envy of the world is about to be dashed against the jagged iceberg of socialized medicine.

There is something darkly comical about these people seeking to comfort us by telling us we may keep our current health plan and our current doctors if we wish. Pardon me if I do not ooze gratitude when government chooses in its mighty benevolence to let me keep something that is a basic right.

And speaking of rights, health care is not one. It is a responsibility. It is something we should secure for ourselves, through our employers or through the open market.

That open market is about to be steamrolled by the same Obama tank brigade that flattened free-market solutions to the banking and housing problems of the last year.

As the first hot summer of the Obama era sees shoulders finally turning cold to this bum-rush of government seizures of more and more of our economy and our lives, the administration has to wonder: Are they onto us?

One can only hope.

The M.O. of this White House, on display for issues from the stimulus to climate change to health care: First, assert phony urgency; then insist that only their solutions have merit and mischaracterize opponents as seeking to “do nothing.”

It worked for the stimulus, and trillions of dollars later, some people are wondering if we’ve been had.

We have. And here they come again.

This White House’s usual logic for hastily jamming things down the public’s throat is to deny voters time to realize what is being done to them. But the health care urgency card is being played with particular ferocity, with absurd original calls for votes in both houses within mere weeks, before the August congressional recess.

They know that if members of Congress return home with the issue still pending, voters will drown them in righteous objections to a plan that brings more deserved opposition by the day.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has suggested that a health care plan born of one-party rule will fail, and with it will topple this season of madness in which a silver-tongued leader with glib PR soldiers has had its way with an inattentive nation.

“It will be his Waterloo,” DeMint suggested, giving Obama the chance to divert attention from his plan’s flagging support by accusing Republicans of “playing politics.”

As if he isn’t.

Of course it’s about politics, to the extent that the political arena is where policy matters get settled. President Obama and his party have a plan to hijack one-seventh of the national economy; the Republican Party is trying to muster the spine and strength to pry government’s grubby hands from a health care system that most Americans like.

Debates are about ideas, but Barack Obama is the face and voice of this looming health care nightmare. Yes, this is about him, and it will continue to be about him as long as he continues his assault on free markets and individual liberty.

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2009/07/26/fight-is-about-obama/

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While it is true that many in the US choose or almost forced by economics to seek health care outside the US it was their choice.  Medical tourists who had cash and wealth – King of Jordan , foreign politicians , oil sheiks did not choose anywhere else generally but the US – be it the Mayo Clinic , John Hopkins or other such respected venues. US health care may of been expensive to many – yet it was available and set the standards of excellence , as opposed to British health care or E.U.  Even though most of the health care institutions overseas are touted as “high quality”  or “as good as “  no one sets these as the highest standard to compare to.

Note the following article of the health care cuts – to the most needy of top of that – by the bureaucrats of the upcoming US socialized non-socialized medical system.

If you have any sense that you may be getting sick in the years ahead, I suggest you get sick immediately. If you will be in need of surgery or any other medical procedure, do it now! If not immediately, be certain that you hand yourself over to the health care professionals before Oct. 15 of this year. That is the date on which President Barack Obama hopes to sign his health care bill once it has gone through the congressional baloney grinder.

At the heart of President Obama’s plan is his stated goal to cut medical costs. That might sound good to you, but it means cutting services, nurses, technicians, medical tests and, most prominently, the use of expensive technology. The president’s top medical advisers are quite frank about this. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel and a health policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget, has chided Americans for the expense of their being “enamored with technology.” Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, charges medical innovations as being responsible for fully two-thirds of the annual increase in health care spending. Their solution is to limit expensive innovations. A 2008 Congressional Budget Office report agrees with their cost analysis but concludes happily that such innovations “permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions.” As I shall show, there are more humane ways to cut health care costs.

Also at the heart of President Obama’s plan is the restriction of services for people 65 and older, who by virtue of modern medicine may actually be 10 to 15 years younger in terms of good health than they would have been a generation ago. Alas, they still have higher health risks and costs than younger people. Thus, they are going to bear the brunt of the Obama administration’s cost cuts, for 27 to 30 percent of Medicaid spending is spent for caring for people at the ends of their lives. With the government taking over more of the nation’s health care costs under the Obama regime, it already has been decided that government monies are spent more economically on younger people than on older people. If a 65-year-old needs the cost of a hip replacement covered, the government will say it would better spend that money on a younger person, whose hip will last longer. Or perhaps the government will decide the money is better spent on preventive medicine for younger people.

In the federal stimulus legislation that the president signed Feb. 17, we find funding for a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. “Comparative effectiveness research” is a term used by economists in health care for making health comparisons based often on age, which leads to limiting care based on a patient’s age. In Great Britain, comparative effectiveness research is actually used to deny patients treatment for age-related diseases, such as heart disease and macular degeneration. When the federal stimulus bill was going through Congress, there were warnings regarding the consequences of comparative effectiveness research. Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., a heart surgeon, warned that it would lead to “denying seniors and the disabled lifesaving care.”

Yet the policy remained in the bill, along with requirements for doctors’ offices and hospitals to maintain databanks on patients while creating a national network to monitor patients’ care. The good side of that is that a central database can send out the latest information on treatments, though doctors who keep up with their medical journals already know about these treatments. The dark side is that it will allow the federal government to control how our doctors treat us. The bill speaks of “appropriate” and “cost-effective” care and provides penalties against doctors, beginning in 2014. Now there is an Orwellian twist to the Obama promise of “hope” and “change.”

As Betsy McCaughey has written in a groundbreaking analysis of the Obama health care proposals, Draconian cost-control measures are not the answer to health care reform, and they are based on erroneous data. Health care’s spending increases over the past five years have been about half what they were in the recent period before that. Average family spending on food, energy and health care has remained the same for decades. Moreover, contrary to myth, there are not 47 million uninsured Americans, but actually about 22 million. Rather than pass a health care reform that mercilessly would limit health care to older citizens (and to chronically ill citizens) while still increasing federal expenditures by at least a trillion dollars, she suggests a modest reform, to wit, debit cards for the uninsured and the needy.

Appearing in a recent installment of Spectator.org, McCaughey wrote, “Providing sliding scale assistance, based on household income, to families to purchase . coverage would cost $20 to $25 billion a year.” That is one reform that would deal with our present problems. There are others, which I shall take up in later columns. What we do not need is Orwell’s Big Brother overseeing the rationing of health care to senior citizens, particularly senior citizens with years of life ahead of them.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/tyrrell061809.php3

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