What happens if you need a medical procedure, or a surgery, and your health insurance won’t cover the entire cost? Many people are turning to hospitals outside of the United States for their health care needs. The cost is often less than the out of pocket expense a person would have to pay if he or she went through American doctors, and used American health insurance.
In general, health insurance is a good thing to have. It helps many people to be able to afford to see a doctor when they need to, to purchase prescription medication, and to receive preventative health care. Health insurance will cover at least part of a person’s medical bills.
Sometimes, though, it won’t cover everything. This means that a person could be stuck paying out of pocket for medical bills that their insurance won’t cover. It can also create situations where a person postpones necessary medical care in order to avoid ending up going into debt from medical bills. There are times when a person cannot afford to pay their high deducible before the health insurance will kick in.
Unfortunately, being unable to pay for medical care doesn’t mean that a person will magically not need any surgery, treatment, or other health care. So, what does a person in these types of situations do? Many are resorting to something that is being called “medical tourism”.
Medical tourism is the term used when a person travels to a foreign country for the purpose of having a specific surgery or medical treatment preformed by the doctors who were trained in that country. This is a growing industry. More than 400 hospitals in 39 different countries currently have accreditation from Joint Commission International, (the international part of the group that accredits hospitals in the United States).
People who have absolutely no health insurance, or who are underinsured, may decide that medical tourism is a viable financial option for them. The same is true for people who have health insurance that doesn’t cover the procedure, or surgery, that they need, and also for people who have a deductible that is too high for them to pay.
The hospitals outside of the United States are not interested in dealing with a person’s American health insurance. A person can get the same medical procedure preformed at a hospital in Mexico, Thailand, India, or other foreign countries, for a much lower price than what it would cost to have it done in the United States. Often, the price is lower than a person’s deductible, or the amount of money that they would be billed for out of pocket for from their health insurance company.
People are scheduling medical tourism for everything from prostate surgery, to dental work, to crazy dies that involve the ingestion of a tapeworm. No hospital in the United States is going to intentionally give patients a tapeworm, for the purpose of helping that person to lose weight.
Medical tourism is not completely risk free, however. The American Medical Association points out that a person should arrange for follow up care from a hospital in the United States before they leave to have their health care needs taken care of outside of the country. It may be confusing to work with doctors that speak a language that the patient doesn’t understand. Traveling far away for medical care means that you will not have friends and family to rely on while it takes place, or immediately afterwards.
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