[ThankYouFreeRepublic]

It's a simple matter of connecting the dots:

1. We aren't addressing the Medicare funding issue. 2. The healthcare costs less abroad.

So why not allow solve our Medicare funding issue by allowing people to receive medical care abroad?

[stylin19a]

I can’t see a country of old timers moving around the world to get health care.
If one spouse goes, the other will have to go.

Who has that kind of money as a retiree?

Will the Feds provide funds for airfare & room and board ?

ain’t happening.

[thinden]

Put another way:. why do we allow people from abroad to get free health care here in usa?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Unless Obamacare is repealed, then this is just applying more mascara on a pig.

[ml/nj]

As an example, I can visit my general practitioner here in Mexico for less than $20 out of pocket, without insurance. A visit to a specialist such as my neurosurgeon will set me back $40, also out of pocket with no insurance. Apart from my personal experiences, on the Best Places in the World to Retire website we have more than 400 expats who have answered close to 1,000 questions about the cost of healthcare in Mexico, Panama and even Nicaragua, with the overwhelming majority reporting that the costs were significantly less than half of what they paid in the U.S.

I don't know.

I have a 90 year-old aunt who lives in Mexico, but she returns to the US to see her doctors.

Want to run a Medicare surplus? Tax everyone a dollar a year and stop paying for anything. It would be nice if insurance were outlawed at the same time too, so we could all afford medical care here in the US.

I say this as a geezer who has been on Medicare for several years now.

ML/NJ

[T-Bird45]

US GPs and specialists could accept payments like that if they didn’t have the admin overhead imposed by CMMS rules. Perhaps not exactly that low but certainly a reasonable amount.

[mountainlion]

All they need to do is pay back the almost $20T they borrowed/stole and things would be fine.

[Calvin Locke]

I'd start with malpractice reform, and start going from there.

And ALL the campaigner donors to Bob Menendez, particularly the ones with involved with Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements...

[eyeamok]

Wouldn’t it be easier to just Enforce EXISTING Consumar Protection Laws??

The Executive has the power and duty to enforce the law. 15 USC Chapter 1, which is where The Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman acts reside, is an extremely powerful body of law bearing on exactly the sort of conduct the entire medical system engages in daily.

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231992

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949
The Bill To Permanently Fix Health Care For All*

[hanamizu]

I had a medical emergency in Costa Rica some years back. I woke up in the hospital and was told I likely had had a mini stroke, a TIA. I was in intensive care for three days, two of which had a nurse in my room 24 hours a day. Three or four doctors came to see me, the president of the hospital a nun who might have been 100, came to pray for my well-being. Two C.A.T. scans and other tests as well. The whole thing cost me and my insurance maybe $5000.

[logi_cal869]

Such bullshit.

This solves nothing nor stimulates debate with asinine suggestions.

[pierrem15]

When my wife and I had BCBS, we had a list of foreign facilities that accepted BSBS and were encouraged to use them.

The current system here is sputtering to a halt because costs are rising from ludicrous to astronomical. As a consequence, deductibles are rising so fast that soon most people even with insurance will not seek medical care except for emergencies. When that point is reached, there's no longer any point to paying for the insurance.

The end result will be a clamor for "single payer," which will seek to dictate cost reductions by lowering reimbursement rates. Then hospitals and physicians' practices will simply close.

If we don't address the costs (principally malpractice and the administrative nightmare of 50+ individual state regulations plus Federal), in a few years almost no one will have medical care.

[libertylover]

So...why do so many Canadians come to the U.S. when they have a serious problem?

[DannyTN]

Your idea is horrible:

• It offshores even more jobs.
• It doesn't fix the American healthcare system at all.
• It will make American healthcare even more expensive, as the volume drops, but the fixed costs of facilities and management overhead and regulatory compliance remain the same.
• It sends people to countries where there may not be good controls or the ability to sue if incompetence abounds.
• You can't usually fly to other countries in an emergency.

[CurlyDave]

In my lifetime, when I went to see a GP he had one office assistant, almost always a woman. She wore a white uniform and many thought she was a nurse, but she was an office assistant. She made appointments, took in cash, did some bookkeeping, and was present when a male Dr. examined a woman. The Dr. paid her salary.

Today the same Dr. will have 2 or 3 assistants, a couple of insurance billing specialists, and a full time bookkeeper. The Dr. pays their salaries. Now the insurance companies have 3 or 4 people on staff to reject the bills from the Dr. unless they are exactly correct, and a supervisor for them.

So, today we have 10 straphangers for every Dr. and someone must pay their salaries.

It doesn’t have to be that way...