as of 2015:
Total Medicare beneficiaries = 55.3
aged = 46.3 million
disable = 9.0 million
author is talking about being an ex-pats.
He lives there.
At what point, cost wise, does one travel for medical care ?
combine vacation travel with medical care ?
probably not.
one or the other.
The author then ends with this straw man:
“However, to those who reject it, I have a question: What is your better solution?”
He doesn’t really give a solution, as he does not explain how to make the headline work.
The solution is this:
If, for example, a Medicare patient needs a hip replacement and Medicare would pay $40,000, they cut a check to the patient for 75%, or $30,000. Result= Medicare saves $10,000.
The patient then goes abroad, where a hip replacement would be around $10,000, so he has $20,000 left over. He would use the $20,000 for travel and have quite a bit left over, to say the least.
This would encourage LOTS of people to travel abroad for care, which provide competition and other good secondary effects.
I haven’t checked the numbers, but I believe them to be approximately correct.
Already, there is a thriving medical tourism industry that helps with this, but only for items that are not covered by insurance, such as plastic surgery, dental care, etc. They would scale to meet demand, and medical practices would make it as easy as possible by moving as close to the US border as possible. This has already happened with “Molar City”, an area just over the Arizona / Mexican border that is very popular.