Traveling abroad is nothing new, but in the U.S., about 1.9 million people go abroad each year not for pleasure, but in search of quality, affordable local health care. In the U.S. city of San Diego, California, 50-year-old Veronica Merrill is one of them, needing a gastric bypass for weight-loss surgery due to her obesity did not meet the standards for health insurance coverage.
The surgery could only be paid for by herself, but Meryl, who drives a school bus for a living, couldn't afford the cost, so she chose to go to Mexico for the surgery, and out of San Diego's airport, the driver arranged by the medical agency was already waiting for Meryl. Because of the large number of people in the U.S. who go to Mexico for medical treatment each year, a medical industry chain with a complete process has been spawned there.
According to AFP, about 1.9 million people in the United States go abroad for medical treatment every year. According to Kominsky, a professor of medical policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, the coverage of the U.S. health insurance system is not comprehensive enough at present, coupled with the high cost of seeing a doctor and the long wait for non-emergency visits to the doctor, so many Americans choose to go abroad to see a doctor.
The United States each year, nearly 2 million people go abroad to see a doctor? Previously, what was thought of as frequent travel by Americans is actually not the case; they do not go abroad for pleasure, but to seek local quality and affordable medical services. The reason is that the United States health insurance coverage standards and high costs, there are most people do not meet the standard, so they have to go abroad for treatment.
It is reported that the gastric bypass weight loss surgery health insurance standards must reach a certain level of obesity can be reimbursed, otherwise the surgery must be paid for themselves. Let's look at a set of data: in 2013, the United States per capita health care costs 9,255 U.S. dollars, 2.7 times the average level of OECD countries. 2000 to 2010, the per capita health care cost growth rate of 5.6%, while the GDP growth rate for the same period is only 4.3%.
In the government's recurrent program expenditure, the proportion of health expenditure increased year by year from 19.9% in 2007 to 22.6% in 2014, and the financial health expenditure increased from US$905.8 billion to US$131.05 billion accordingly. Ownership and utilization of large medical equipment: the U.S. market medical equipment sales account for 44% of the global market share.
The utilization rate of U.S. screening tests (including MRI and CT) is twice the average of other OECD countries, and the fee level is significantly higher than that of other OECD countries, for example, the average fee level of MRI and CT is more than 3 times that of the United Kingdom and France, and 4.5 times that of Canada.