A renowned Indian heart surgeon is currently building a 2,000-bed, internationally accredited“health city” in the Cayman Islands, a short flight from the U.S. Its services will include tertiary care procedures, such as open-heart surgery, angioplasty, knee or hip replacement, and neurosurgery for about 40% of U.S. prices. Patients will have the option of recuperating for a week or two in the Caymans before returning to the U.S.
At a time when health care costs in the United States threaten to bankrupt the federal government, U.S. hospitals would do well to take a leaf or two from the book of Indian doctors and hospitals that are treating problems of the eye, heart, and kidney all the way to maternity care, orthopedics, and cancer for less than 5% to 10% of U.S. costs by using practices commonly associated with mass production and lean production.Harvard Business Review — HBR Blog Network (Free registration required)
India’s Secret to Low-Cost Health Care
Vijay Govindarajan and Ravi Ramamurti
Costs are low only in terms of dollar pricing. The costs are prohibitive to average Indians. Pricing in dollars is a very artificial way, dependent on exchange rates, which in turn are dependent upon the export import balance (which typically are a very small part of a large nations GDP)
ReplyDeleteThe Indian doctors would be doing a far greater service, if they figured out a way to provide adequate healthcare to their own countrymen.
Outsourcing physicians is another solution, like the platinum coin, where we are working around a broken corrupt government that doesn't function rather than reaping the benefits of a well run and managed set of laws, rules and regulations that benefit society broadly.
ReplyDeleteMedicare, in 2011, spent about $549 Billion (~$1850/ per capita) in the United States. If the United States could achieve medical productivity and the higher quality of care similar to most other developed nations (like Canada, Germany or France, Australia, or Japan), our costs would be about 35-45% lower (using WHO costs) or almost $5,000 per enrollee per year. Those savings add up to ~$650/yr per capita! That is a huge!!! The unfunded part of medicare provided by the magic of fiat, was only about $31 bln last year. So The real magic happens in modernizing US healthcare and fixing the inefficiencies. I suspect those big fancy houses, european cars, fat pensions and outsized lifestyles enjoyed by the average and median physician won't be downsized without a fuss. Nor will the giant hospital complexes, the lush grounds, the overpriced supplies, the layers and layers of invoices, analysis and cutting games played by drs/insurance/hospital cos. The crazy high prices on drugs won't be lowered without some change in government either. It has to be the most backward, inefficient, and poorly performing industry in the entire nation, by far. How could anybody argue that we don't need Obama care, desperately?
My friend went on a mission over there last year to provide care for the elderly who he said are just set out along side the road to die....
ReplyDeletersp,
maybe Peterson and his "death panel" cult could move over there and feel right at home... get these morons the hell out of the USA anyway...
ReplyDeleteIf one were to paint with a broad brush, Indian doctors are among the most corrupt and venal in the world. The Cayman Island venture is just an example of their venality.
ReplyDelete