Editorial: Bypassing a vacation

Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2006 | 7:36 a.m.

American businesses, which already contract customer service, manufacturing and other jobs to foreign countries, now are looking across the oceans for medical care for their U.S. employees.

According to a recent story by the Los Angeles Times, rising health care costs are prompting businesses that pay for their own health insurance plans to send willing employees to foreign countries for surgeries that can cost 10 times as much in the United States.

One North Carolina paper products company covered the cost of an employee's rotator cuff and gallstone surgeries at a hospital in India - picking up the tab for the employee's airfare and the airfare for his fiancee. When it's all over, the company will give the employee up to $10,000 of the amount the company saved, the Times reports.

Patients told the Times that they have received top-notch care in these state-of-the-art foreign facilities, many of which are staffed with doctors who were trained in the United States. And they saved a lot of money to boot. A coronary artery bypass surgery at India's Apollo Hospitals costs about $6,500, while the average price for the same procedure in California is $60,400.

Industry experts estimate that tens of thousands of Americans seek such care overseas each year. That's worrisome for the U.S. hospital industry, which counts on insured and paying patients at a time when many patients can't cover the skyrocketing costs or must rely on low-paying government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

If enough U.S. employers take their health care programs offshore, some experts fear that the hospitals back here at home could collapse. While that isn't likely to happen any time soon, it wouldn't hurt for U.S. health care providers to take a look at how these foreign facilities are providing such low-cost care. Patients are consumers. And when faced with a tenfold price difference for the same service, most consumers are going to choose to save money.