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9 Quinnipiac Health L. J. 219 (2005-2006)
Outsourcing Vital Operations: What If U.S. Health Care Costs Drive Patients Overseas for Surgery?

handle is hein.journals/qhlj9 and id is 225 raw text is: Outsourcing Vital Operations: What if U.S. Health Care Costs Drive Patients Overseas for Surgery? Michael Klaus1 I. Introduction Science and technology blur borders, connect people and integrate economies, and for decades, United States corpora- tions have been reducing costs by outsourcing operations and capitalizing on the abundance of resources in Asia.2 Today, cor- porations are not the only ones availing themselves to the cost savings of Asia. In 2004, over 150,000 Americans traveled to Asia for surgeries, leaving the United States and trusting their bodies to surgeons in Thailand, India and Singapore.3 At a time when 45.8 million Americans do not carry health insurance,4 many un- insured Americas are enticed by the option of purchasing a sur- gery-vacation package that costs as little as a tenth of the cost of surgery alone in the United States. Surgeons in foreign private hospitals employ the same technologies as surgeons in the United States, were trained in the United States or Great Britain, and many, especially in India, practiced in the United States before returning to their home countries. If the quality of care in Asia is comparable to the quality of care in the United States, and surgery in Asia saves hundreds of thousands of Americans tens of thousands of dollars, then how could medical tourism present a challenge for Americans, the United States health care industry, insurance companies and the Asian countries that pro- mote surgery-vacations to foreigners? This paper examines the reasons for the medical tourism boom and explores the implica- tions of this trend, from the effects on local patients, to the so- 1 J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2006. 2 See, e.g., MICHAEL BACKMAN & CHARLOTrE BUTLER, BIG IN ASIA: 25 STRATEGIES FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS (Aardvark ed., Palgrave Macmillan (2003). 3 In 2004, India attracted 150,000 foreign patients, Singapore 200,000, and Thai- land 600,000, and about 25% of those patients are Americans. See infra Part II.A. 4 Health Insurance Coverage: 2004, U.S. Census Bureau, at http://www.census.gov/ hhes/www/hlthins/hlthin04/hlth04asc.html. 219