Posted on 08/13/2019 4:47:48 PM PDT by buckalfa
Some U.S. companies are paying for employees to travel to other countries for medical care. To alleviate concerns about quality of care, American surgeons are traveling to perform their procedures, The New York Times reports with Kaiser Health News.
The report highlights the story of one patient who traveled to Cancun, Mexico, for knee replacement surgery. The patient, Donna Ferguson, gets her health coverage through her husband's employer, Ashley Furniture Industries. In exchange for having her surgery performed in Mexico, Ashley Furniture paid Ms. Ferguson $5,000 and covered her travel costs. She also received the surgery free of out-of-pocket copayments or deductibles, according to the report.
An orthopedic surgeon flew from Milwaukee to Cancun to perform Ms. Ferguson's knee surgery. The surgeon was paid three times the Medicare rate for performing the procedure. He is one of roughly 40 orthopedic surgeons in the U.S. who have teamed up with Denver-based North American Specialty Hospital to treat patients abroad.
When patients are deciding whether to travel abroad for surgery, a key consideration is the quality of care they will receive. NASH hopes having American surgeons perform the procedures will alleviate quality of care concerns for patients and self-insured employers considering whether to offer this option to their workers, according to the report.
Ha!
You left out one big factor. The illegals that wind up in the ER with an infected cut, the flu or some other thing and can’t pay, the hospital passes that on to everyone that does pay.
It’s happened. As you might imagine, there have been a lot of lawsuits between Americans concerning things that have happened in foreign countries. The courts clearly have jurisdiction over the people since they a are both Americans. The only question is whether you apply US law or Mexican law. I think the argument could be made (and has been made successfully in the past) that the court should apply US law when the dispute is between two Americans. Usually the argument is that the foreign law is stupid or difficult to determine and it would benefit both parties to use American law that they are more familiar with. In this case that argument might not make sense because the doctor is likely to say that he did it in Mexico precisely because he wanted Mexico law to apply. That’s a pretty good argument but not necessarily a slam dunk.
having an american surgeon perform the surgery does nothing to insure the quality of the operating room and the quality of the after-care in the mexican hospital ...
“All true, but if the doctors are top rate Americans, they won’t put up with crappy conditions.”
A. How do you know that for a fact?
B. How does a foreign surgeon enforce non-crappy conditions throughout a mexican hospital?
“A. How do you know that for a fact?”
How does anyone, at any hospital, US or foreign.
Eventually we all have to trust people. But to each their own. For me, if it means waiting 2 or 3 years for a knee (like it is in the UK now, if not longer), or getting the same done in Mexico next week, with the same American doctor, I’ll take the risk.
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