Medical Tourism, part one

If we don’t see massive reform very soon, I think this is going to become so huge. It’ll probably become huge anyway, because the quality metrics are so good and the prices are so low that some procedures are almost certain to grow in their ability to attract self-payers…despite however the reimbursement scheme pans out after the next presidential and congressional elections.

A few thoughts on Med Tourism:

• http://www.healthpointcapital.com/research/2005/08/05/medical_tourism_and_orthopedics/index.php

• http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/healthcare/medicaltourism.html

Reuters article with a few projections:

• http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSIN208338 

Long-term outlook on healthcare spending (from the Congressional Budgeting Office):

• http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/MainText.3.1.shtml

50 Years of Market Swings (from CNN):

• http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/storysupplement/investor_special/2008/index.html

Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity (from PLOS Medicine):

• http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050029&ct=1

Cost-effectiveness Registry (from the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health):

• https://research.tufts-nemc.org/cear/default.aspx

Opinions on healthcare in the U.S.:

• http://www.arthurdevany.com/

More opinions on healthcare and other topics:

• http://www.thestalwart.com/the_stalwart/

in particular: http://www.thestalwart.com/the_stalwart/healthcare/index.html