Cure with medical tourism
Should you or your loved ones become one of these medical tourists?
While the idea of saving money is always attractive, there’s often a price attached and this is no exception.
Consider the downside. Going to your local doctor, or a renowned specialist at a big medical center, for an operation is risky enough. Just look at all the release forms you have to sign before a surgeon will touch you. They do this because they know things sometimes go wrong in the operating room.
But what if something goes wrong in a foreign land, thousands of miles from home, in an operating room where no one speaks English, in a country that wouldn’t know a lawsuit from a pantsuit?
Yes, it’s scary but there is an upside. A medical vacation may be worth the potential risks, especially if you would not have been able to have the treatment because you either didn’t have health insurance or the insurance you do have wouldn’t cover it.
Let’s say you need stomach surgery that would cost $30,000 in a typical U.S. hospital. That same procedure, including airfare and a hotel room for ten days where you would stay during your recovery period will cost you less than $5,000 in India.
Dental work for one medical tourist would have cost $7,000 here. But he spent just over $3,000 in the Philippines, and that included two round-trip airline tickets for him and his companion.
If you’re thinking about this option, there are a number of things to consider. After cost, the most important aspect of traveling to a foreign country for a medical procedure is safety. Medical tourism can be helpful for dual purpose. save money and get cure.
You want to find a hospital or medical facility that has a highly trained staff and the equipment to handle any of those things that could go wrong during or after a medical procedure. One way to do that is to determine that the facility has been certified by the Joint Commission International (JCI), a wing of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).More information can be obtain at Medical Tourism Wiki
