Medical tourism: Deal-seekers flock to Mexico for health care

[RamboLiberal]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

What did you bring back from your last trip to Mexico? A blanket from Oaxaca? Criollo chocolate from Chiapas? Leather boots from Valladolid? A growing number of U.S. visitors are coming home with a new hip, a repaired hernia, capped teeth, a lap band or a rejuvenated face.

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Medical tourism is becoming a greater force in Mexico's economy as efforts to reform the U.S. health care system fall victim to political maneuvering. As the tenacious recession leaves more Americans without jobs — or working for employers who can no longer afford to provide insurance — adding a medical procedure to the vacation itinerary looks increasingly attractive. The U.S. government doesn't keep statistics, but based on trends in the past several years, the Mexican government is expecting the number of visitors seeking medical treatment there to reach 650,000 annually by 2020.

Parecki's experience is no fluke; treatment in a top-rated, internationally accredited hospital in Mexico typically costs at least 60 percent less than it would in the United States. Susan Wilson of Walnut Creek, another MedToGo patient, saved $100,000 on two knee surgeries, one of which was revision surgery on an infected replacement knee initially installed in the United States. There are plenty of such stories.

•After being told by her HMO that her "horrific" periods were all in her head, Joyce Birdwell of Berry Creek (Shasta County) went to a private physician who found a large, ulcerating uterine fibroid. Removing it would cost $35,000. Intensive research, primarily on the Internet, led her to BridgeHealth International, another medical tourism facilitator, and she had the surgery at CIMA Hermosillo. She paid about $8,000 for the entire procedure, airfare and hotel.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/09/22/mexico_mix_medical_tourism.DTL

[Recursion]

1. Costs. Costs. Costs.

We have to get costs down. I don't give a damn what system we use to pay for it. We have to get costs down.

[eridani]

2. And US retirees are ripping of the Mexican health care system

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2009/08/29/20090829biz-mexicare0830.html


It sounds like the perfect health plan: medical care with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work - all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year. To get it, all you have to do is move to Mexico.

As the United States debates an overhaul of its health-care system, thousands of American retirees in Mexico have quietly found a solution of their own, signing up for the health-care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute.

"It was one of the primary reasons I moved here," said Judy Harvey of Prescott Valley, who now lives in Alamos, Sonora. "I couldn't afford health care in the United States. . . . To me, this is the best system that there is."

<snip>

American enrollees have generated some resentment among Mexican taxpayers who have been paying into the system for decades, and IMSS officials say they don't want to be overrun by bargain-hunting foreigners.
"If they started flooding down here for this, it wouldn't be sustainable," said Javier Lopez Ortiz, IMSS director in the popular retirement enclave of San Miguel de Allende.

The medical care doesn't cost a dime after paying the annual fee, and it is usually good, retirees and health experts say. Word of the plan has spread through chat boards and in the "retire in Mexico" books that have multiplied in recent years.

[molly77]

3. World Health Organization

ranks Mexico 62. The US is 37. France is 1. Italy is 2.I would never go for anything in Mexico medically. If it is that much worse than US. Because our health care is not so good right now.

[a la izquierda]

4. What you don't know...

is that many doctors in the US are trained in Mexico.

[eridani]

5. Prolly about 80% as good as what we get at 1/20th the cost

Yes, I'm sure there is risk involved, but if you don't have insurance or much disposable income, why not?