Business: U.S. patients travel globe for medical care
Business: U.S. patients travel globe for medical care: "U.S. patients travel globe for medical care
India and other Asian countries are gaining reputations as places to go for top-quality procedures at a fraction of the cost.
By Associated Press
Published October 2, 2005
BOMBAY, India - Bradley Thayer, a retired apple farmer from Okanogan, Wash., traveled 7,500 miles to get his torn knee ligament fixed and says he paid a third of what it would have cost him in a U.S. hospital.
And that included air fare to Bombay.
Thayer, 60, had no health insurance when he fell and injured himself while visiting British Columbia. He says his U.S. doctors told him he would have to wait six months for surgery and pay bills totaling $35,000. So he joined a rising tide of American and European patients heading to India, Thailand and Singapore for top-class orthopedic surgery, plastic surgery, infertility treatment and cardiology that come much cheaper than in the West.
It's the latest in outsourcing: Asian doctors study in the United States or Britain, acquire their skills and reputations in hospitals there, then take them back to their home countries and wait for the business to come to them.
'Flying half way around the world is cheaper,' said Thayer, beaming from his Bombay hospital bed. 'I came straight to India. It's a long way to come without tests, but I feel great.'
He had never been to India, and he first had to overcome the stereotypes at home.
'My friends and relatives said I was crazy. They said, 'They'll cremate you along the Ganges.''
But he already felt familiar with Asian doctors. 'In Canada and America, when you read the names of doctors in hospitals, every third or fourth doctor is Indian,' he said.
Hospitals in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore have been taking these so-called 'medical tourists' since the mid 1970s, initially from the Middle East and South Asia, later from Africa, and now from the West.
So far, new"
India and other Asian countries are gaining reputations as places to go for top-quality procedures at a fraction of the cost.
By Associated Press
Published October 2, 2005
BOMBAY, India - Bradley Thayer, a retired apple farmer from Okanogan, Wash., traveled 7,500 miles to get his torn knee ligament fixed and says he paid a third of what it would have cost him in a U.S. hospital.
And that included air fare to Bombay.
Thayer, 60, had no health insurance when he fell and injured himself while visiting British Columbia. He says his U.S. doctors told him he would have to wait six months for surgery and pay bills totaling $35,000. So he joined a rising tide of American and European patients heading to India, Thailand and Singapore for top-class orthopedic surgery, plastic surgery, infertility treatment and cardiology that come much cheaper than in the West.
It's the latest in outsourcing: Asian doctors study in the United States or Britain, acquire their skills and reputations in hospitals there, then take them back to their home countries and wait for the business to come to them.
'Flying half way around the world is cheaper,' said Thayer, beaming from his Bombay hospital bed. 'I came straight to India. It's a long way to come without tests, but I feel great.'
He had never been to India, and he first had to overcome the stereotypes at home.
'My friends and relatives said I was crazy. They said, 'They'll cremate you along the Ganges.''
But he already felt familiar with Asian doctors. 'In Canada and America, when you read the names of doctors in hospitals, every third or fourth doctor is Indian,' he said.
Hospitals in Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore have been taking these so-called 'medical tourists' since the mid 1970s, initially from the Middle East and South Asia, later from Africa, and now from the West.
So far, new"
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