Affordable Healthcare for Items Under Insurance Deductibles
Monterrey, Mexico, November 11th, 2009
With healthcare costs in the United States continuing to rise at higher rates than inflation, insurance companies are having to raise the prices of their policies and in turn, leave more and more Americans without coverage. As a consequence, some innovative insurers are designing lower premium plans to appeal to the budget-conscious, but as a trade off, these policies are starting to include huge deductibles and co-pays. Medical Travel is not only becoming an escape valve for those choosing elective procedures and for the totally uninsured, but also offers attractive options for the large group of partially insured citizens.
Weight loss surgery is an extremely popular option for achieving significant weight loss when other weight loss efforts have failed. According to the American Obesity Association, the most effective treatment for morbid obesity is bariatric surgery. Surgical options for obesity surgery include the gastric band, gastric bypass, mini gastric bypass and gastric sleeve. Once the decision has been made to move forward with weight loss surgery the next choice thus becomes which surgical approach is best. One must take extra care to thoroughly consider the pros and cons of each surgical technique, and with the help of their doctor find the method that is best for them. Most important is choosing a surgery that will help to keep the weight off, not just for a little while, but forever.
Medical Travel, also known as Medical Tourism, is basically the globalization of healthcare. As technology and information flows are shrinking our world, healthcare is becoming universal. This year, more than one hundred thousand people from all over the world will travel away from home seeking healthcare. Their reasons range from wanting access to higher quality and more advanced technologies (typical of patients from developing countries traveling to the U.S.), to needing quicker access (common in Europeans and Canadians), to requiring far less expensive treatments (U.S. patients going abroad). Today, this constitutes an unstoppable trend that is gaining additional acceptance as patients from all over the world find more and better options for their healthcare needs in places they never thought possible. In the case of Americans looking for high quality medical or dental care at great value, neighboring countries have shown to have private healthcare systems which exceed expectations.
When one thinks of the term Medical Travel, often times the first thing that comes to mind is a desperate patient traveling far away from home to receive a necessary heart or orthopedic surgery. However, there exists yet another side of Medical Travel that is gaining popularity among Americans in which the main purpose is not a lifesaving surgery, but instead opportunities to enhance one’s appearance and even relax in the meantime. Plastic and Cosmetic procedures are much more expensive in the U.S. and Canada than elsewhere, which is why thousands of Americans and Canadians are looking for alternatives abroad.
