Medical tourism!
As medical costs in the US continue growing at double digit rates, we start to look elsewhere to get quality services at cost-efficient prices.
The typical reaction for the uninitiated is "Who's really going to trust a hospital in Hungary or Thailand to do their heart transplant? Most Americans won't gamble with their lives".
But they are! 250,000 to 650,00 of them, each year! It's true that many Americans are still apprehensive about using medical tourism. Either they don't trust hospitals in other countries, or can't travel abroad. Or they still miraculously have a great insurance coverage. However, elective surgeries like knee replacements and plastic surgeries are so expensive that medical tourism becomes a viable alternative, because travel costs will be generously offset by savings in medical procedures. That's our beloved free market successfully delivering healthcare!
What about basic healthcare and preventative medicine? Can the free market succeed there?
Imagine having virtual medical examinations where doctors in Belarus, India, or Poland provide basic health services to American patients here, in America, at a fraction of the current costs. These patients would go to a US office where a technician, not a doctor, would examine the patient and run all the basic health tests while simultaneously being supervised by an MD abroad via a high speed internet connection. Telemedicine already exists and will expand if we see changes in mindset, regulations, and technology.
With all the savings virtual basic healthcare could provide, wouldn't the AMA and other American medical interests try to block that from happening? Of course!
America picks and chooses when it wants free market capitalism and when it wants domestic protectionism. Right now the US free market is failing to provide affordable basic healthcare at home. If the international community is allowed to compete in a level playing field, then basic healthcare in the United States would probably become more cost effective.
