Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Healthcare Tourism
Medical Tourism Meets Healthy Opposition
Just before I left to the US, there was this story in the Times of India by Chidananda Rajghatta that talked about some opposition from a US Trade Union to sending their members to India for medical treatment. Blue Ridge Paper, the company which was supposed to send its employee to India for treatment has had to find a locally available (within the US) alternative. Surprisingly, both the Indian and the US media have been quite silent about this. A google search very quickly revealed the original story.
But then this would have been an expected outcome to too much focus on the low cost of medical treatment in India. In an earlier post I had suggested that our pitch should be based more on the world class treatment that is available here rather than talk about how a procedure would only cost 15-20 % of what it would cost in the US. The primary fact is that no one (not the employer, or the patient, or the hospital even is aware of what a procedure actually costs-the prices being used in most comparisions are actually special prices negotiated by large health insurance companies for their members, and not necessarily the costs incurred by either the smaller companies-in fact the uninsured are faced with the highest costs !!!)
By this unnecessary focus on the low costs, the message actually being sent is that the quality of services is low enough to be delivered at these low costs. No wonder that the USW has opposed the move to send employees to India for treatment. Sure, there could be political angles to this, but then healthcare is certainly no IT, and India should certainly want to avoid any opposition to healthcare outsouring (the opposition to IT outsourcing died out soon after the 2004 presidential elections, but healthcare could be a completely different situation, and just when the market is opening up, one wouldn't suggest anything that could hinder its growth)
Just before I left to the US, there was this story in the Times of India by Chidananda Rajghatta that talked about some opposition from a US Trade Union to sending their members to India for medical treatment. Blue Ridge Paper, the company which was supposed to send its employee to India for treatment has had to find a locally available (within the US) alternative. Surprisingly, both the Indian and the US media have been quite silent about this. A google search very quickly revealed the original story.
But then this would have been an expected outcome to too much focus on the low cost of medical treatment in India. In an earlier post I had suggested that our pitch should be based more on the world class treatment that is available here rather than talk about how a procedure would only cost 15-20 % of what it would cost in the US. The primary fact is that no one (not the employer, or the patient, or the hospital even is aware of what a procedure actually costs-the prices being used in most comparisions are actually special prices negotiated by large health insurance companies for their members, and not necessarily the costs incurred by either the smaller companies-in fact the uninsured are faced with the highest costs !!!)
By this unnecessary focus on the low costs, the message actually being sent is that the quality of services is low enough to be delivered at these low costs. No wonder that the USW has opposed the move to send employees to India for treatment. Sure, there could be political angles to this, but then healthcare is certainly no IT, and India should certainly want to avoid any opposition to healthcare outsouring (the opposition to IT outsourcing died out soon after the 2004 presidential elections, but healthcare could be a completely different situation, and just when the market is opening up, one wouldn't suggest anything that could hinder its growth)
# posted by Srivathsan @ 8:03 AM 
