High Costs Drive Americans to Surgery Overseas

Here is an article in the Christian Science Monitor describing a man who is saving his company $80,000.00 by getting needed surgical treatement in India, instead of the United States.

If costs for expensive procedures continue to skyrocket here, it's only a matter of time before your passport becomes as important as your health insurance card.

The patient's employer will pay $10,000.00 of the savings back to him; instead of going into debt for the co-payment of $20,000.00, he will come out ahead financially.

American healthcare providers will not like this one little bit. I predict they will claim the quality of care is far below U.S. standards. Sort of like the claims made against Canadian pharmacuticals.

Funny how anything that's bad for the bottom line is bad for the patient.

New Study Shows Americans Get Double Whammy

A new study of over 7,000 patients in six countries shows that people in the United States receive the highest rate of medical errors in the world.

An article published in today's American Chronicle describes a situation where, not only do we pay more than people in other countries, our system delivers significantly more errors per patient than those of other developed nations.

Among the disappointing findings: about 34% of Americans reported some kind of medical error; nearly half say they either do not seek medical care when sick, do not get prescriptions filled or get prescribed treatements because of the costs; the corresponding figure for the U.K. is 13%. Nearly one third of Americans still spend over one thousand dollars per year on out-of-pocket expenses; in the U.K., two-thirds of patients reported no out-of-pocket expenses.

Pa Kids to Get Universal Healthcare

An article in the August 11th Philadelphia Inquirer describes a new program to provide health insurance to children, making PA the third state to do so.

Among the interesting national trends driving this program: an increase of 31% in the number of children enrolled in public healthcare programs over the last ten years, contrasting neatly with a 5% decline in private coverage. About 8 million children across the country have no access to health coverage. These figures are from a recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.