Re: Election outcome

From: Phyllis (phyllisnilsson_at_buckeye-express.com)
Date: 11/05/04 

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 07:05:14 -0500

That may be an option for some, but not for us.

leslie wrote:
>
>
> 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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