Saving on health care costs by crossing borders

An article in Newsweek chronicles a new phenomenon: outsourcing US health care to Mexico. People have been going abroad to save money on cosmetic procedures for quite some time (Brazil is an infamous destination for this) but this is something different:

Dorthea, 72, a retired bank teller, lives in Harlingen, Texas, a city of about 67,000 in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley. Like a lot of Texans, she’s crossed the border to Mexico a few times to buy cheap medication. But she’d never considered undergoing complicated medical procedures there–at least, not until she was quoted the prohibitive price of $30,000 for a gastric-band procedure, a treatment for obesity in which a band is placed around the stomach to limit food intake. It wasn’t covered by her insurance, so Dorthea, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, opted to drive south and pay less than $10,000 for the outpatient operation at an American-owned hospital in Reynosa, Mexico, 10 minutes over the border and about an hour from her home. The outpatient surgery was a success, and she’s planning on returning for follow-up care. “It was very good treatment,” she says.

We all know there are obvious gaps and fissures in the US health care system, even for those who are insured. Particularly with the economic climate, people are going to come up with inventive solutions to get the care they need. But now as Newsweek reports even US hospitals are getting in on it by building facilities across the border and charging far less for the procedures there. We need some serious solutions for lowering health care costs inside the US. Not everyone has the luxury of going to Mexico.
When you pair these types of cross-border transactions with projects like a new border fence and super-stringent immigration laws, you start to see the contradictions of a global free market that allows goods and services to cross borders, but not people.
Via Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz

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