Medical Tourism for
Hundreds of Thousands of U.S. Patients

High quality care at a low price elsewhere is causing
a negative impact on jobs / economy in the U.S.

Summary

• Current: 750,000 patients left U.S. in 2007
• Projected for the year 2013:
  • 1,600,000 patients expected to go OUT of the U.S.
  • 500,000 patients are expected to go IN to the U.S.
• Result: huge loss of U.S. health care jobs
  and business income, such as for equipment and prescription drugs

Clarification. At this web page we do not (yet) have provide specific numeric projections of what the impact is of having a negative balance of 1,100,000 U.S. patients. For now we leave that to common sense that there will be a very large economic impact, not to mention other kinds of impact.

Explanation and Impact

Features of Medical Tourism

• Get high quality care in another country at a much lower price (from the perspective of a U.S. citizen).
• Have the option of the patient and/or the person(s) accompanying the patient to have the option of touring the other country before or after the medical services are used in that other country.

Awareness. Until recent years it seems like neither the United States, nor other countries, were fully aware of the fact that the U.S. health was declining so badly, while the U.S. spending was uniquely out of control as it continued to fail to provide health care access to its people. See Performance for details.

Impact: Gain in Other Countries. Other countries around the world are taking full advantage of their economic position by building world-class medical facilities to handle the increased business of medical tourism. Medical tourism has meant an incredibly large loss of health care business to other countries. In 2007 the number of American patients who traveled to other countries for health care was about 750,000.

Impact: Loss of U.S. Health Care Business Those same 750,000 medical tourism trips meant that there were 750,000 fewer patients treated in the United States. If there were only 5 medical professionals to treat each patient for laboratory work, imaging (x-ray, CT-Scan, MRI), nursing, physicians and specialists, that represented an negative impact on the employment of thousands of medical professionals in the United States.

References

Medical Tourism Association and Harvard Medical School Professor Sharon Kleefield, the sources for the Denver Post article which communicates the 750,000 medical tourism patients for 2007 and the projected 1,600,000 patients for 2010. [Update: the expected date for 1.6 million has been changed by the medical tourism experts to 2013 due to the downturn in the economy.]

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