U.S. patients are increasingly going overseas for big savings on major surgeries, the American Medical Association said.
Medical tourism to countries like Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and India has surged as many of the 46 million people in the United States without health insurance look for affordable treatment, the Chicago Tribune said Friday.
The newspaper said India is becoming a top destination for patients seeking heart surgery, organ transplants and knee replacements. The AMA said major U.S. employers and insurers are looking at the potential for major cost savings by sending their workers to other countries for elective surgery.
"Major (insurers) and employers may soon follow in the footsteps of individuals," the medical association said in a report last year.
The AMA said prices offered to medical tourists are often 60 percent to 85 percent lower than in the United States, which offsets the cost of travel and first-class accommodations, the Tribune reported.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
Related stories:
Integrins as receptors give insight into rotavirus and diarrhea
Eleven years ago, Dr. Mary Estes of Baylor College of Medicine and her colleagues discovered the first viral enterotoxin, rotavirus NSP4, a toxic protein that affects the intestines, causing diarrhea.
Seeing Straight
Evidence from laboratory studies and a pilot clinical trial confirms the promise of a simple treatment for amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” according to researchers from the United States and China.
State policies influence drug treatment programs
Philadelphia, PA, June 25, 2007 – State policies have a significant impact on the services performed by substance abuse treatment programs, and could play a key role in efforts to expand the use of research-based "comprehensive" treatment approaches, reports a study in the June issue of the
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (JSAT).
Microchip is helping restore vision to the blind
Last year, Wentai Liu watched as surgeons implanted a microchip he had designed into the eye of a blind patient. For Liu, a professor of electrical engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, it was a major milestone in two decades of work on an artificial retina to restore vision to the blind.
Therapy Preventing Brain Damage in Cardiac Arrest Patients
Therapeutic cooling, a technique used at University Medical Center, is helping to prevent brain damage in cardiac arrest patients.
Crucial factors in lymphoma development and survival discovered
Experiments with new mouse model suggest therapeutic targets
Researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center have discovered an important factor in the development of B-cell lymphomas, one of the fastest growing forms of cancer. The B-cell receptor on the surface of B cells can cooperate with the MYC oncogene to accelerate the development of lymphomas. The research team, led by Yosef Refaeli, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at National Jewish Medical and Research Center , also showed that disruption of signals from the B-cell receptor can inhibit growth of the tumors. The research is being published in the June 24 issue of the journal,
PLos Biology.
Guidelines for the reporting of health research are underfunded
Although reporting guidelines can improve the accuracy and reliability of research reports, there is little funding available for developing such guidelines, according to a new survey published in the open access journal
PLoS Medicine this week.
Changes in local health care markets affect national patient safety project
A national patient safety initiative involving major corporate employers and employer health care coalitions may set common goals, but success relies greatly on regional health care players and local market factors for actual implementation, says a recent study.