Re: Election outcome

From: leslie (LESLIE_at_JRLVAX.HOUSTON.RR.COM)
Date: 11/05/04 

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 06:13:23 GMT

Phyllis (phyllisnilsson@buckeye-express.com) wrote:
: We just got the bill for my husband's hospitalization when he broke his
: left and had to have surgery - $74,000. Can't wait to see what it cost
: for the repeat surgery a month later because the screws came loose.
: Fortunately, the insurance paid for almost all of it - our share of the
: hospital cost is $250!
:

Look for more and more Americans without medical insurance to have surgery
and other expensive medical treatments outside the U.S...

 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002069711_indiamed23.html
 India's low price, high-tech care draw "medical tourists"

 ``Friday, October 22, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
   
   India's low price, high-tech care draw "medical tourists"

   By John Lancaster
   The Washington Post

   Last month, Howard Staab, who had a life-threatening heart condition,
   flew to India from North Carolina with his partner, Maggi Grace, so
   surgeons could replace his heart valve.

   NEW DELHI -- Three months ago, Howard Staab, 53, learned he had a
   life-threatening heart condition and would have to undergo surgery at
   a cost of up to $200,000, an impossible sum for the carpenter from
   Durham, N.C., who has no health insurance. So, he outsourced the job
   to India.

   Taking his cue from cost-cutting U.S. businesses, Staab last month
   flew about 7,500 miles to New Delhi, where doctors at the Escorts
   Heart Institute & Research Centre replaced his balky heart valve with
   one harvested from a pig. Total bill: about $10,000, including
   round-trip airfare and a planned side trip to the Taj Mahal.

   "The Indian doctors, they did such a fine job here and took care of us
   so well," said Staab, a bicycling enthusiast who was accompanied to
   India by his partner, Maggi Grace.

   Staab is one of a growing number of people known as "medical tourists"
   who are traveling to India in search of First World health care at
   Third World prices. Last year, about 150,000 foreigners visited India
   for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at about 15
   percent a year, said Zakariah Ahmed, a health-care specialist at the
   Confederation of Indian Industries.

   Eager to cash in on the trend, posh private hospitals are beginning to
   offer services tailored for foreign patients, such as airport pickup,
   Internet-equipped private rooms and package deals that combine, for
   example, tummy-tuck surgery with several nights in a maharajah's
   palace. Some hospitals are pushing treatment regimens that augment
   standard medicine with yoga and other forms of traditional Indian
   healing.

   The phenomenon is another example of how India is profiting from
   globalization -- the growing integration of world economies -- just as
   it has in such other service industries as insurance and banking,
   which are outsourcing a growing assortment of office tasks to the
   country. A recent study by the McKinsey consulting firm estimated
   India's medical-tourist industry could yield up to $2.2 billion in
   annual revenue by 2012.

   "If we do this right, we can heal the world," said Prathap Reddy, a
   physician who founded Apollo Hospitals, a 6,400-bed chain that is
   headquartered in the coastal city of Chennai and is one of the biggest
   private health-care providers in Asia.

   Robotic surgery

   The trend is in its early stages. Most foreigners treated in India
   come from other developing countries in Asia, Africa or the Middle
   East, where top-quality hospitals and health professionals are often
   hard to find.

   Patients from the United States and Europe are relatively rare because
   of the distance they must travel and, hospital executives
   acknowledged, because India continues to suffer from an image of
   poverty and poor hygiene.

   As a whole, India's health-care system is hardly a model, with barely
   four doctors for every 10,000 people, compared with 27 in the United
   States, according to the World Bank. Health care accounts for 5.1
   percent of India's gross domestic product compared with 14 percent in
   the United States.

   On the other hand, India offers a growing number of private "centers
   of excellence," where the quality of care is as good or better than
   that of big-city hospitals in the United States or Europe, said Naresh
   Trehan, a cardiovascular surgeon who runs Escorts and performed the
   operation on Staab.

   Trehan said, for example, that the death rate for coronary-bypass
   patients at Escorts is 0.8 percent. By contrast, the 1999 death rate
   for the same procedure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where former
   President Bill Clinton recently underwent bypass surgery, was 2.35
   percent, according to a 2002 study by the New York State Health
   Department.

   Escorts is one of a handful of facilities worldwide specializing in
   robotic surgery, which is less invasive than conventional surgery
   because it relies on tiny, remote-controlled instruments that are
   inserted through a small incision.

   "Our surgeons are much better," boasted Trehan, 58, a former assistant
   professor at New York University Medical School, who said he earned
   nearly $2 million a year from his Manhattan practice before returning
   to India to found Escorts in 1988.

   Although they are equipped with state-of-the-art technology, hospitals
   such as Escorts typically are able to charge far less than their U.S.
   and European counterparts because pay scales are much lower and
   patient volumes higher, said Trehan and other doctors. For example, a
   magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan costs $60 at Escorts, compared
   with roughly $700 in New York, Trehan said.

   "Food is great, too"

   Tom Raudaschl is an Austrian patient who lives in Canada and earns his
   living as a mountain guide. Raudaschl, who has osteoarthritis in his
   hip, decided last year to have "hip resurfacing," a relatively new
   procedure that involves scraping away damaged bone and replacing it
   with chrome alloy.

   He learned he would have to wait up to three years to have the
   operation under Canada's national health plan, a delay that would have
   cost him his job, Raudaschl said. In the United States, the procedure
   would have cost $21,000, he said.

   So this month, Raudaschl flew from Calgary to Chennai, where a surgeon
   at Apollo Hospital performed the operation Wednesday for $5,000,
   including all hospital costs, Raudaschl said by phone from his
   hospital bed.

   "As soon as you tell people that you're going to India, they frown,"
   Raudaschl said. But he said he could not be more pleased. In India,
   "They picked me up at the airport, did all the hotel bookings, and the
   food is great, too," said Raudaschl, whose private room was equipped
   with Internet service, a microwave and a refrigerator. Most important,
   Raudaschl said the surgeon told him he would be "skiing again in a
   month."''

Jerry

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