Not surprising since hospitals established by multinational corporates –or even national industrial houses – are set up at great cost which has to be recovered only through their beneficiaries.

They are equipped with the latest state-of-the-art diagnostic tools and trappings that can detect anything from a cyst to cancer.

It is not that your doctor suspected a strangulated hernia when you went to that mega hospital for a mild stomach ache.

He ordered those X-rays and CT scans and MRIs because he has to show that he has used the hospital diagnostic machinery to continue in service.

His survival is more at stake than yours. If you feel that the corner clinic with its friendly physician is not good enough, then you must pay the price for an opulent hospital which cannot stay alive without returns from its consumers – just like any other product.

Lifestyle diseases

Studies have shown that an ever growing elderly population coupled with growing income levels – added to a spurt in lifestyle diseases like diabetes and cardiac complications – will seek therapeutic help in these hospitals which are better suited for health tourism – the catchword in today’s medical parlance.

They are lavish. Special diets can be ordered. Special services can be commanded. Visitors may dine in style in well appointed restaurants. Their employers or insurance plans take care of the expenses.

Such insurance-related healthcare may profit doctors and hospitals. But, it sets off a new medical practice that was unknown in this country a few years ago, and which has its own risks and dangers.

A study conducted at the Harvard Medical school points out that “computerised patient records might actually encourage doctors to order expensive tests more often.”

This country has also become the favourite destination for foreign tourists seeking high quality medical services at a low cost. ‘Wellness tourism’ is advertised like any other brand.

“India offers treatment of complicated diseases at reasonable costs,” screams one advertisement. Or, another flaunts “ highly proficient team of surgeons treat you as per international standards.”

Not only do they offer high class surgery for the most sought after medical procedures like bypass, angioplasty hip or knee replacements among other things, but they also entice their customers with holiday packages in exotic tourist spots in the country.

If a bypass surgery costs $130.000 in America, the visiting patient can get away with $1,000 for the same in any one of India’s leading cardiac centres. He can have a $43,000 hip replacement for a mere $9000, a complicated $62,000 spinal fusion for a paltry $5000.

It has been estimated that the Indian healthcare industry will become a 280 billion dollar booming business within the next decade.

Instead of condemning the well established super speciality hospitals which cater to those who can afford them, why not pressurise governments to improve the condition of state hospitals to bring them on par in order to cater to the majority of patients who are poor enough to go bankrupt if disease strikes.

The National Health Policy of 1983 recommended “an integrated net-work of evenly spread speciality and super speciality services…through private investments for patients who can pay, so that the draw on government facilities is limited to those entitled to free use.”

According to the census of 2011, India’s population has gone beyond 1.2 billion. It is a fearful picture when one considers that we have not provided a proper working health care system for all. The majority population does not have access to the minimum health care.

Inadequate sanitation and dearth of clean drinking water adds to the spread of bacterial infections like hepatitis, dysentery or pneumonia which continue to plague our over crowded cities as well.

Last year, India shockingly developed a totally drug resistant (TDR) form of tuberculosis which, combined with the spread of HIV/AIDS poses a serious health hazard in the country. The Central government has also reduced funding for immunisation which leaves more than 50 per cent of our child population exposed to childhood diseases.

It has been estimated that about two million infants die in India annually before they even complete their first year of birth. Those who do, suffer extreme malnutrition that paves the way for other diseases.

Where do they go for medical support? Corporate hospitals? Or, ill managed, badly equipped corporation hospitals?

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/241636/wellness-tourism-health-care-system.html

Medical Tourism Resource Online

The medical profession has earned this trust by centuries of ethical practise by the profession in general.

Granted, that there are few bad apples, but still the statistics overwhelmingly support the above view.

The medical tourism, although not a new profession as we think, is certainly not yet yet in the stage of self regulation yet.

This is partly due to the Internet based approach by the profession. Many medical tourism companies are none but a bunch of sales people selling cheap surgeries.

Now, how can we think of enforcing ethics with this opportunistic group of people?

The first step could be facilitated by initiating the changes in the management. Unless that company is run by people who has deep understanding of the current global health care system and are willing to follow ethics, this goal will be far from reality.

Mr. Bob Talasila, the founder of the World Medical and Surgical LLC remarks- ” We see these temptations everyday- but it is the genuine concern for the patient and identifying the professional ethics with your self respect is the way to go.

You need to have formal education and professional pride to accomplish that. Unfortunately, you can’t expect that with most medical tourism companies.

http://worldmedicalandsurgical.blogspot.com/2012/04/medical-tourism-company-and-ethics.html

Medical Tourism Resource Online

Edward Jones downgraded the ratings on the stocks of the three health insurers it covers — UnitedHealth Group Inc, WellPoint Inc and Aetna Inc — to “sell” from “hold” late on Friday. Those companies are the three largest U.S. health insurers.

As of the end of the month, the brokerage will no longer cover the companies.

“We are concerned that market structure changes, profit limitations and rebates, and ever-present political/regulatory pressures will negatively impact future profit growth and more than offset the anticipated influx of newly insured members,” Edward Jones analyst Aaron Vaughn wrote in a report.

The brokerage, whose clients are long-term individual investors, recommends instead looking at other healthcare stocks, such as pharmaceutical companies, Vaughn said.

The recommendation represents one of the most negative calls against investing in the health insurance industry since the new law passed earlier this year.

The law paves the way for more than 30 million uninsured Americans to receive coverage over the next several years, while imposing new regulations and fees on health insurance companies.

While 2010 looks like a strong year for the health insurers, the new reforms that kick in beginning next year and continue to 2014 and beyond cause massive uncertainty, Vaughn said in an interview.

“It’s going to be a dramatically different environment from today and no one can really say what that environment is going to be,” he said.

“The risk/return for the industry overall is not attractive for individual investors, and that’s who we’re focused on for the long term,” Vaughn said. “We’re worried about mom and dad having this in their portfolio.”

http://www.marklevinshow.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6713CA20100802?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&rpc=22&sp=true

New US Health Care System

Meanwhile, those who pay the bills—consumers and employers– are not waiting idly to see how legislators fix the world’s most expensive and least equitable health care system. They’re taking matters into their own hands, finding ways to reduce health care costs without sacrificing quality.

One of the solutions they’re turning to is medical tourism, which can be seen as the penultimate example of Consumer Driven Health Care. Traveling to another country for medical care is a solution that offers significant and immediate savings—often 90 percent—with almost no upfront investment and no reduction in quality of care if coordinated through a reputable medical tourism facilitator.

Until recently, medical tourism was fueled by individual patients. Now, employers pinched by 100 percent increases in health care premiums since 2000, are intrigued with alternatives that save money while expanding employee options, and for them, the arrow points to medical tourism. All parties involved in exercising this option win: employers save money on the cost of the procedure, employees save money by having the deductible waived or perhaps a reduction in out of pocket expenses. Employees also gain access to some of the most qualified surgeons in the world.

“For employers, this is a ‘dare to be different NOW approach’,” said Wouter Hoeberechts, CEO of medical travel company WorldMed Assist. “Forward-looking businesses see a strong competitive advantage in a solution that retains employee loyalty through expanded health care options while at the same time shaving cost out of the business.”

But not all businesses are so forward-looking. “Sadly, a more common approach is traditional cost-cutting by reducing benefits or shifting an ever-increasing portion of the burden and responsibility onto employees. Employees paid 17 percent more for insurance benefits in 2008 than in 2007,” said Hoeberechts. “This is a lose-lose-lose proposition: Employees lose precious benefits; businesses lose employee loyalty; and an ever-increasing number of Americans lose access to affordable health care. For long-term competitiveness, this strategy could become a death knell.”

Politicians at both the state and federal levels have a clear mandate to fix access, affordability and efficiency of our health care system “The proposals on the table are varied, big, and expensive. Many of the solutions are excellent and are definitely needed, but they won’t deliver the savings on insurance premiums that employers and consumers need right now,” said Hoeberechts.

Impediments to speedy relief for skyrocketing health care costs are big: Stakeholders are lined up on all sides of all reform issues with swords drawn. With a national debt never before imagined, funding sources are bone dry. Building information technology platforms to facilitate electronic medical records, prescription improvements and enhancements to patient care coordination–all while protecting accuracy and consumer privacy – presents awesome hurdles.

Two other solutions gaining traction are a shift to preventative care to reduce acute care expense and waste, and paying for proven results rather than number of cases managed. “These will require entirely new paradigms from stem to stern within an industry that has a long tradition of embracing the status quo,” said Hoeberechts.

Consumers and employers can’t wait for consensus and funding solutions for such a gnarly array of issues. “For them, medical tourism is like an instant-win lottery ticket,” said Hoeberechts.

In working with employers and brokers to add a medical tourism component into their existing health plans, Hoeberechts explained his company can get a tailored plan up and running very quickly so that employers see immediate savings. “Once employers look into medical tourism, they find it hard to argue against a solution that’s available today, brings instant savings, retains employees and their loyalty, and expands medical options to include the world’s finest surgeons and facilities.”

source: i-newswire.com

Some ideas are not as wacky as they seem. Health Minister Kevin Falcon’s suggestion that we look at ways to turn part of our health care system into a gold mine is not one of these ideas. On closer examination it is just as wacky as it appears at first blush.

In interviews last week, he asked why British Columbia can’t be “the Mayo Clinic of the North?” Why not start looking at the potential of parts of our system for generating revenue rather than always simply focusing on the costs?

Like the idea of a perpetual motion machine, a device that produces more energy than it requires to run, Falcon’s proposal has some attractive elements as long as you are willing to overlook a few fundamental laws of physics, or in this case economics and politics.

Falcon told Vancouver Sun reporter Jonathan Fowlie that he is looking at the billions of dollars Americans are spending overseas in what is known as the medical tourism market. His idea is that they will happily pay a premium for surgeries that make use of excess capacity in our hospitals.

The profits will then pay for more health care for British Columbians, so rather than competing with local residents now on waiting lists, surgical tourists would enable health regions to provide more services, thus reducing waiting times.

As I say, it’s an attractive notion — a way to get more health care without having to pay more for it.

Part of the thinking behind the idea is refreshing and should be heartening for supporters of our public health care system.

First is the confidence implied by the minister that our system is able to deliver world-class health care at a competitive cost to both American health providers and the growing number of private clinics that have sprung up here over the past several years.

Second is the long-overdue admission that the province has taken a political decision to ration health care, that in many cases people are waiting for surgeries, medical tests and other treatments because we aren’t putting enough money in health care budgets, not because of a shortage of doctors, nurses or operating rooms.

So if we can find more money, we should be able to reduce waiting times for British Columbians. And if we can do it without raising taxes, all the better.
So if we can find more money,we should be able to reduce waiting
times for

But there are still a couple of fundamental flaws with Falcon’s idea. The first is that we don’t have a system that allows us to discern the cost of delivering any individual treatment. If we don’t know how much it costs to put in a new heart valve or replace a knee, how can we know what we have to charge in order to make a profit? This is an issue that also makes it impossible to determine whether we should be contracting out some treatments to private clinics as a way of improving access to health care.

It’s also not at all evident that we can compete in the health tourism market, which is based primarily on the lower labour costs in destination countries, such as Thailand and India. If we had a real cost advantage, I wonder why private clinics that are now advertising to Canadians would not already be actively soliciting that business.

The biggest issue is still political. The optics of offering through our public health care system services to Americans that Canadians are not able to get are simply appalling. The idea that someone from Seattle can pay for a surgery in Vancouver while a Vancouver resident has to wait — or go to Seattle — is so appalling, in fact, that a conspiracy theorist might speculate this whole plan is being considered to deliberately undermine the credibility of our public system to pave the way for its demise.

source: Craig McInnes – Vancouver Sun.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

a) How to pay for the package

b) How to reduce its cost

c) Whether or not to have a government-run insurance company

d) What mandate to impose on employers to cover their workers

But none of these points copes with the more basic question of where the extra doctors to cover these now uninsured people are going to come from. You cannot cover the 50 million new people Obama seeks to cover without more doctors and nurses. But the administration and even the Blue Dogs in the House have proposed nothing to add to the supply of medical services even as they plan vastly to increase the demand by covering new people.

By focusing on false issues — or at least tangential ones — the politicians can play the Washington game of compromising on these questions while failing to address the central flaw in the legislation.

The projected Senate “compromise” being discussed in the Senate Finance Committee would eliminate the employer mandate and the public insurance option. But it would still extend coverage dramatically without making provision for more medical personnel. The Blue Dog compromise in the House would replace a public option with co-op insurance companies organized by states and would limit the employer mandate, but would have the same blind spot: too few doctors and nurses to cover the new patients.

Both bills would continue to vest the administration with the power to cut Medicare and the mandate to do so. Congress’ only check on the evisceration of the program would be its ability to veto proposed cuts within a limited period of time, as now applies to military-base closure.

Experience has showed that Congress is just as happy to sit back and let the closings or cuts take place without acting to stop them.

And by failing to provide for more doctors or medical schools or nurses, both bills will force widespread rationing of medical care. And that rationing is going to mean lower-quality medical care for us all, especially for the elderly.

A doctor in Massachusetts — where Romney passed a plan similar to Obama’s, recently told us that she now has to read 60 mammograms a day in the time she used to spend on 45. Less time, she said, means less accuracy in reading the complex data and more mistakes. “It keeps me up at night,” she told us, “that I might make a mistake, I am so rushed.”

And, for the elderly, it means less and less medical care. A Federal Health Board will sit in judgment of medical procedures and protocols and will decide what guidelines all providers must use in giving patients certain types of care or withholding them.

For example, the drug Avastin is widely used in the United States to treat advanced colon cancer. But it costs $50,000 a year. So the Canadian health system will not permit its use. As a result, 41 percent of colon cancer patients in Canada die each year as opposed to 32 percent in the United States. The average eight-month wait for colonoscopies in Canada also contributes to the problem. Colon cancer rates are 25 percent higher north of the border than in the United States, where colonoscopies are readily available.

Neither the House nor the Senate will act on these bills until September. Congressmen and senators will be home during August to test public opinion. It is up to us to give them an earful!

source:  http://www.theusdaily.com/articles/viewopiarticle.jsp?id=2443&type=Opinion

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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The line in the former Soviet Union was that “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” During Stalinist times of the Soviet Union the one ( if not only ) safe means of providing criticism of current economic or social conditions or of providing a comment on the current situation that the citizens were living with and through was through humour – the telling of a joke . It was considered safe tradition. Nothing new here. The basis of most fairy tales are based in political or situational humor – to make light of something very serious and dark. The tale of “Humpty Dumpty . sat on a wall, Humpty had a great fall”- was a description of the Royalty at the time – “Off with your head could be the edict in a flash”. “Ring around the Rosie … A pocket full of poesy – Hush they all fall down” relates tales of the “Black Plague” which caused untold numbers of death and disease in the dark ages.

In the same way Canadians with their health care systems , find that their only recourse to poor service levels with corresponding staggering growth of bureaucracies and their infrastructures and systems find that their only recourse seems to be the telling of jokes and humor related to the current state of the Canadian
“Health Care System” and Systems.

Medical economist M. Labovitch pointedly notes that the butt of the anger is safely directed at doctors rather than taking a risk to the health care of the teller of the tale and their families.

Bureaucrats it seems , while putting in their full days , compiling reports and printing graphs and charts on the high end colour laser printer , have little sense of humour and the telling of jokes:

Five Canadian Surgeons are discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.

The first, an Ontario surgeon says, ‘I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’

The second, a Quebec surgeon responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try electricians! Everything inside them is colour coded.’

The third a B.C. surgeon says, ‘No, I really think librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’

The fourth, an Alberta surgeon chimes in: ‘You know, I like construction workers…those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.

But the fifth, a Newfoundland surgeon shut them all up when he observed: ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the head and the ass are interchangeable.

At least Canadians currently have the escape valve of private medical care in the US afforded to them at present , at least for the time being.

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First ask yourself how sick and immunocompromised you are .  What are the potential outcomes if you go , don’t go or delay therapy.  Also work in the mix the implications , complications and progression of your disease or illness should you hold off on your medical and healthcare treatment or procedure.  Of course if its strictly cosmetic surgery that is another call entirely.

Canadian Doctor: Shortages So Bad North Of The Border Some Towns … – Dr. David Gratzer, writing in the Wall Street Journal, also makes a good point about just how dependent the Canadian health care system is on America’s. Indeed, Canada’s provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. …

Why we need a public options for health care and debunking … – Every time we try to have a discussion about a public single payer option we hear how we shouldn’t have it and Canada as used as an example of how bad public health care options are. This article debunks the myths surrounding Canadian health … As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one. The article continues, debunking myths about Canadian …

Wash Park Prophet: Canadian Health Care Works – The things that work in the Canadian health care system are explained here. I suspect, although the article does not say so, that in addition to having lower administrative costs and saving money with preventantive care, that many providers are also paid less richly in Canada than in the United States (although providers in Canada have essentially no bad debt losses, while American providers are swimming in bad debt). Posted by Andrew Oh-Willeke at 6/09/2009 12:08:00 AM …

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