Does President Obama’s health care reform package really contain a “death panel” that will decide who gets medical care based on their “level of productivity in society”?
According to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, it does. She said as much on her Facebook page.
According to President Obama, Democratic backers of the plan, and FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, it does not. Nor, they say, does it provide health care for illegal aliens, as some Republican opponents of the plan suggest.
But as politicians play football with the American health system, many health care consumers are already getting quality medical care at a fraction of the price in the U.S.
They’re just getting it in another country.
Depending on where they live abroad, U.S. expats can pay half, a third, or even less for health insurance and quality medical care than they did at home.
For example, Mexico has both a government-provided national health plan and private insurance. Expats living in Mexico can join the Mexican national plan for just $470 per year. The cost is so cheap that they often get Mexican private health insurance as well. Private health plans from Mexican insurance companies can run as little as $2,300 per year for full coverage for a husband and wife.
Expats are also going abroad for major operations. In one case, an expat underwent shoulder surgery at a modern medical facility in Ecuador that included general anesthesia, a semi-private overnight room, and all medications for just over $2,000. The patient’s mother had the same operation in the U.S. for $18,000.
According to Josef Woodman, author of a guidebook on medical tourism called Patients Beyond Borders, more than 200,000 Americans sought healthcare abroad in 2008, with that number expected to double by 2010. Their most common characteristic was being uninsured or underinsured in the U.S. – a category that includes an estimated 85 million Americans.
Woodman estimates that savings from getting medical care abroad can average 25% to 75% over U.S. prices. As examples, Woodman sites savings for a hip replacement ranging from $30,000 to $50,000, and savings for a heart valve replacement from $20,000 to $45,000.
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