Vote for Your Health

Invariably, the rising cost of health care in Western countries have engendered a phenomenon known as “medical tourism”. It is such a way of tourism for those people who according to Jacob Bogatin cannot afford expensive medical treatment at home or who want to get a better quality health care, in contrast to what they can get inside their country. Also, medical tourism is increasingly used by employers who find it a less expensive way of health insurance for their employees.

The countries to look for are more than trivia and common: India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, whereas transaction costs make up only a small part of such procedures in comparison with Western countries. According to many reports, the best hospitals in these countries employ well-trained surgeons, trained in the United States, Britain and other countries where medical care is much more expensive.Not only to tourists who want to combine vacation with a surgical facelift or tummy come and stay in these hospitals but people come for more serious surgeries such as heart surgery, hip replacement and other required surgeries. Jacob Bogatin drives in the following example: one of Thailand’s hospitals «Bumrungrad» is as luxurious as any resort hotel and has staff of about 500 physicians with international training and is equipped with modern medical technologies.

India aspires to leadership in the field of “medical tourism” and the sick in this country pull back and keep Indian physicians who have trained abroad, but are willing to work in India, even though they can earn much more in the United States or other Western countries.

Besides the fact that these hospitals are often better equipped than most North American hospitals, they are also famous for a very positive attitude towards their customers. For example, after surgery patients are usually allowed to stay in the hospital several days longer than in the USA where there is a procedure of usually discharging and letting patients go home earlier because of high costs. Though, of course, Jacob Bogatin is strongly opposed to such a practice.

But there are as well some downsides of medical tourism. For example, not everyone decides to fly through half of the world, even for a considerable price, and upon arrival to learn an unfamiliar culture and often be faced with shocking levels of poverty, as soon as you leave the boundaries of luxury hospitals.
By the weaknesses of medical tourism medical malpractice (in case something goes wrong) and a low level of legal protection against various types of it can be attributed as well as local epidemic diseases such as malaria, which you need protection from.

Still, experts predict that medical tourism in the world will only increase and become more popular, because with the constantly rising medical costs and decreasing quality of care, as in Western countries, it is not surprising that many patients and employers have to resort to medical care through third persons.