There are some people who don’t mind outsourcing.
Turns out that sending work to India can also mean sending yourself. There’s a rapidly growing trend of people going to India to get medical work done on themselves that they can’t afford at home. One man from San Francisco needed a new procedure done to eliminate severe hip pain called joint resurfacing. Since most insurance companies don’t cover this procedure it would cost about $25,000 to have it done in the States. Our friend from San Francisco went to India and had it done for $6,600.
Another gentleman from London needed heart surgery. There’s quite a backlog in England just to see a cardiologist, not to mention having surgery (can take as much as 6 months). If he went to a private hospital it would cost about $38,000 for the procedure. So he went to India and had the operation performed by a London-trained surgeon for $8,500. Another individual from North Carolina needed heart surgery. Would have cost him $68,000 in the States; cost $10,000 in India, which included round-trip airfare and a trip to the Taj Mahal.
About 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical treatments in the last year that ended March 2004. This number is projected to climb by 15% a year for quite a while. A consulting firm estimates that foreign visits for medical purposes will generate $2.5 billion for India by 2012.
“We’re gearing up, and the doors of Indian hospitals are wide open to the Western world,” said a highly regarded heart surgeon in Bangalore.
1 comment:
Wow. Sounds like a good deal... A trip to the Taj Mahal too?
I was here for 2 years with no health insurance, and doctors really add up the bill. I ended up paying several times around $3-400 for simple procedures, in-and-out in 5 minutes type things. I didn't go to the doctors for the longest time. The irony of course, is no job= no health insurance, so how do you pay??? The people that have to pay are the ones that can't afford it.
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