Will Your HMO or Company Send You Overseas For Treatment?

August 23, 2009

This morning while watching CNN Headline News I noticed a mention on their crawler about HMO’s sending patients overseas for treatments and surgery. As I recall, I had not heard of this before, so I thought I do a little research on it. I did find some info, but very little, which surprised me. If this is truly happening, why hasn’t there been more talk about it, especially in light of the passionate health care debate going on today?

I’m guessing the reason we haven’t hear so much about this is because those in favor of reform have basically been absent while the hired terrorist for the Republican Party has been hijacking town hall meetings and other venues. Repressing this kind of information is their objective. But that doesn’t excuse the main stream media (except Fox “News”), and there’s probably few that monitor as many news outlets as I. And I haven’t heard any Democratic officials mention this even when they’re being interviewed by the “friendlies”. So what’s going on? Why hasn’t the Democrats exploited this practice?

Of the very few articles I’ve found on this issue is this one by Daily Finance that was published earlier this year. Another was by Health Insurance Colorado back in November 2006. The former article says “this is the choice that many employees covered by HMOs or company health plans may soon face, as the price of procedures in the U.S. continues to climb [bold added]”.

The author of the article, Tom Barlow, points out that some companies such as Satori World Medical will pay patients as much as $14,000 to go overseas for surgery. For the average working person and low income elderly, this is a lot of money. And when a company like Satori can save $40,000 for a procedure by sending patients to Mexico, the $14K they pay the patient still leaves them well ahead. That alone says our cost is not only too high but completely out of control. The writers’ main source, Steven Lash, President and CEO of Satori, says the current $2 trillion annual cost in the medical field will double in ten years. That’s “TRILLION”, mind you; but the number is more like $2.5 trillion. He points out that “in the U.S. we spend two to three times as much on health care as any other country in the world, yet we are 42nd in mortality” [bold added]. But the World Health Organization put us in 37th place. Even Columbia is well ahead of us in 22nd.

Amazingly, most of those violently protesting health care reform could very well be affected by this policy if reform isn’t achieved. Also, if the Republicans are so against reform, why haven’t they already tried to do something about the problem that’s causing HMO’s and companies to explore this avenue? (The only thing we’ve heard from a few Republican officials is “the cost [of health care] is too high”.) Maybe it’s because many of them are so wealthy and/or have so many wealthy friends in the industry they and their families won’t have to worry about being sent overseas for health care.

Could there be any better evidence that insurers and companies are making medical decisions for patients and employees? Some may offer it as a choice right now, but you can rest assured if something isn’t done about this, there will be no “choice” in the near future.