Medical Tourism: A Risky Business

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I have medical insurance, two substantial, full plans which should more than adequately cover all of my medical needs, yet there is seldom a month that goes by in which I do not find myself in serious deliberations with the billing department of one of my medical providers - usually the pharmacy.  It's almost a game in the United States for insurance companies to try and figure out ways to keep from paying for medical services.  I persist, but I wonder and worry about the more than 30 million Americans who have no medical insurance whatsoever.

It is no secret that millions of Americans with either no medical insurance or less-that-adequate medical insurance have taken to crossing international borders in search of health care, a parctice that is commonly referred to as "medical tourism."  There are always risks involved with turning your body over to someone else for medical care, but with care in the United States we assume some safeguards are built into the process - by the doctors' training and experience, as well as by legislation - whether they actually are or not.  But when a person crosses over into another country for medical care, those assumptions can go out the window.

In addition to medical standards and conditions not necessarily being equivalent to US standards, a medical tourist abroad is also enmeshed into a whole different culture, some of which can impact health care.

I am, of course, building up to what happened in the Mexican border town of Matamoros last week.  One US medical tourists and three fellow travelers from the state of North Carolina, crossed the border at Brownsville, Texas, on Friday, March 3rd, and entered Matamoros, Mexico.  One member of the group was traveling for cosmetic surgery.    What that person and the group found, however, was something quite different.   Gunmen, reportedly part of a Mexican drug cartel, opened fire on the North Carolina minivan.  Two of the travelers were killed by the gunmen and the other two were temporarily taken hostage.  The two bodies and the two kidnap victims were ultimately released back to the US government later in the week.

Two American citizens lost their lives essentially because medical care is not distributed in the United States in a fair and equitable manner.  One of them had chosen a riskier avenue for treatment because it was either cheaper or easier to access than the same treatment in the United States.  

And every day thousands of other Americans leave the United States for essentially the very same reasons.   They take risks by traveling out of the country for medical care, and sometimes they benefit from taking those risks, and sometimes they do not.  Just about the only sure winners in this sorry equation are the American businesses which control the delivery of health care within the borders of the United States.  Those big businesses don't gamble, they just pay their lawmakers and go right on banking obscene profits that are generated from dodgy business practices.    And if that corrupt system means that some people will not be able to get the medical treatment they need, well, they can always drive on down to Matamoros - or Juarez - or Nogales - or Tijuana, and take their chances.

Medical tourism is a multi-billion dollar business, one that is deeply rooted in home grown greed!