A Guide for Americans Seeking Affordable Medical Treatment Abroad
November 3rd, 2008Via: Los Angeles Times:
When Andy Dijak injured his right knee playing tennis, he wasn’t surprised that he needed surgery. “It swelled up like a balloon,” said the 50-year-old West Lake resident.
The real shocker was the price tag: $12,000 to $15,000 to repair tattered cartilage. Dijak, a creative director for an entertainment company, has no health insurance, so he started shopping for a deal.
He found it in the northern Mexico city of Monterrey at Christus Muguerza High Specialty Hospital, owned by Dallas-based Christus Health. Here, the staff treated him more like a big shot than a bargain hunter. An English-speaking employee picked him up at the airport. Dijak recuperated in a private hospital room with a flat-screen television and a view of the peaks of the Sierra Madre. His surgeon recorded the operation on video and gave Dijak a DVD copy for his peace of mind.
Total cost, including airfare: $4,500.
“I got better care there than I would have in the United States, unless I were a billionaire,” he said.
Americans have long been willing to leave the country for bargain face-lifts and cut-rate dentistry. But now the availability of top-notch medical services at low cost is enticing a growing number of U.S. patients to developing nations for more sophisticated procedures. Most, like Dijak, are obtaining elective surgeries for ailments that aren’t life-threatening. Increasingly, they are seeking treatment for more serious conditions, including heart maladies and cancer.
The more into the interior of Mexico, the better. Believe it or not, dentistry in towns along the border as almost as expensive as they’d be in the US. For instance, replacing four crowns (my upper incisor bridge fell out after 40 years a few years ago) would cost me almost $3,000 in a border town called Ojinaga (right across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Texas), and just a bit more here in Texas. But, the dentista said, it would only cost a few hundred in Chihuahua City a few hundred miles south on the same highway. Same dentist, BTW, top notch in Mexico. Monterrey, of course, is in the interior. But medical care in Mexico or other developing country is still problematic for some ailments…a friend of our recently died of liver-kidney problems partially due to the fact that he couldn’t get proper affordable care in time, passport issues, and the like. As with everything else you need to be prepared. But, yes, I myself really can’t see getting decent care w/o GOOD insurance in the United States in my lifetime (I’m 56). I DO NOT see the US ever having a health care system such as in Scandanavia, or even Canada. THEY have really brainwashed Americans against caring about their fellow man, thinking it is “socialist” to have universal health care. I am afraid it will take a complete economic collapse to wake up Americans to the plight of their fellows. Christian nation??? HA!
I hear you, Snorky. I am sick of the way Wall Street still dominates – no, completely OWNS the discussion – on all economic issues in the U.S. I know Americans aren’t the most savvy and perceptive types, but how can they let if fly right over their heads when the same so-called “free market” windbags who wholeheartedly supported the Bailout can lecture us about the dangers of “socialism” in our healthcare system?