Posted on 02/16/2010 7:38:29 AM PST by Badabing Badablonde
What seems to be missing from the article is that the vast majority of “medical tourists” are traveling for cosmetic surgery.
Fly to exotic local, get your face lift/lipo/boobs and recooperate in the pampered luxury of our resort. Fly home refreshed and remade, a new you.
“I’m not even curious why you seem to have such a grudge against the medical providers in this country.”
I don’t. I want you to be well paid to provide excellent services here in the US. I may need them some day. If this continues, your pay is going down, and you’ll be even more angry than you appear to be now.
You don’t seem to understand that, and attribute something to me that isn’t there.
If you, as a doctor, cannot ask the right questions about why your paying customers go elsewhere, then why shouldn’t I ask them?
Didn’t some pro-athlete lose his mother from cosmetic surgery she had in Brazil, or something like that? I can’t quite remember the story.
Doctors/hospitals charge more of non-medicare patients because they routinely LOSE money treating the government backed people. Just ask a pharmacist who is forced to sell a drug at a loss, thanks to the prescription plan created by REPUBLICANS hoping to buy votes like democrats. The cost of medical care is outrageous thanks to the federal government.
I blame the government and people who think they have a “right” to my services. And “customers” are people who pay me, as opposed to a goodly number of my patients.
I would LOVE to be able to set my own prices with patients. I can’t. The government dictates what Medicaid and Medicare deigns to pay me. The insurance companies do likewise. The hospital dictates what insurance companies we HAVE to have a negotiated rate with. Other insurers will just pay us what ever they feel like if we don’t have a negotiated rate.
If I knew in Med school what I know now I would be an ophthalmologist or a plastic surgeon. People seem perfectly willing to pay cash for their services.
I’ve already dealt with several complications from discount breast augmentation in Mexico. When it goes bad, they wander into the ER and we are left holding the bag. None of the local surgeons wants to get involved at that point.
Maybe that’s the story I was thinking of....oh well.
You are certainly on the side of the fence my daughter-in-law MD was (deceased now). You echo her thoughts right down the line. There are always two sides to the pancake, but too often people know what they assume. That said, yes there are those in the field that don’t belong there for one reason or another. But that wide brush paints alot of mis-information.
My Veterans Affairs physician is from India. When I asked him about a gastric bypass, he suggested I fly to Bombay/Mumbai where I would receive first class care, a private room, a full-time nurse and American-trained surgeons to do the operation for about 5% of what it would cost in Mexico, much less the United States! BTW, the VA only does the operation in two localities (Pittsburg and Dallas) and you have to be a patient at those hospitals and get on a long waiting list.
“I blame the government and people who think they have a “right” to my services. And “customers” are people who pay me, as opposed to a goodly number of my patients.”
I agree with you. It bothers me a great deal that procedures can be obtained at fractional cost off-shore.
Eventually, medical services will have to be provided on a paying basis here - and I believe costs will go down significantly.
I don’t think a lot of people understand that the cost driver is not the doctor and his/her paycheck.
>>>When seeing a patient, I do not ask for insurance or how they will pay.
I’m over 60 and have NEVER SEEN THIS... EVER!
It’s ‘sit in the front office and write, write, write. Fill out the visit form for at least 1/2 an hour.’ Then wait, wait, wait.
Maybe you should check out your front office sometime.
I am a hospitalist and see only hospitalized patients. I truly don’t know which of my patients have insurance and which don’t. My billing office obtains info from the hospital or initial cursory information entered into the system by the first of us to see a patient. Unless it makes a difference to outpatient care - ie which homecare agency is available on discharge, or what nursing home options are available, I do not check a patients insurance status while caring for them. It makes no difference to the care my group and I provide. People with no insurance get exactly the same level of care from my group as those with insurance.
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