Survivor goes undercover in Tijuana cancer clinics
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Reporting for Al Jazeera English’s People & Power, Sarah Macdonald tells how her own battle with breast cancer led her to shave her head, hide a camera and go undercover to investigate south-of-the-border clinics touting alternative cancer therapies.
The thriving sub-industry of alternative Tijuana cancer clinics relies primarily on palliative care licenses to operate, a end-of-life-care-focused designation that seems somewhat sinister when it’s hidden behind promises of miracle cures. In looking beyond those promises, MacDonald’s investigation finds an interesting mix of chicanery and genuine good intentions, but ends on a familiar, cautionary note.
I have been fortunate in that I have successfully emerged from my own treatment for breast cancer, so I completely understand the desperation that people will feel when they are told their condition is terminal. It is a death sentence. I understand why many patients or their families will begin to scour the internet in search of a cure and will seize on anything that offers hope. However, as our investigation has shown, at least some of the Tijuana clinics are offering nothing but false hope. There is little or no evidence to support their claims that their strange therapies actually work and there is plenty of evidence that vulnerable people have parted with large sums of money for no reason.
Corporations push domestic medical tourism
AHCJ Board Member and Kaiser Health News reporter Julie Appleby explores the emerging phenomenon of domestic medical tourism, a catchy name for the corporate art of comparison-shopping for hospitals across the country.
Photo by contraption via Flickr
“By steering workers to facilities with high-quality care and lower prices,” Appleby writes, “employers say they can reduce their costs 20 percent to 40 percent — more than enough to cover the travel expenses.” The reduction in the cost comes not just from cheaper service, but because treatment at higher-quality centers leads to fewer complications.
There’s no universal national clearinghouse for the sort of data companies are using for this comparison shopping, and each of the field’s pioneers seem to have a different method. At least one uses the hospital ratings produced by Health Grades, while Lowes has signed a deal with the Cleveland Clinic. Employees are sometimes reluctant to travel, but the prospect of cheaper, better care has proved attractive.
Appleby’s sources found the trend difficult to quantify, but clearly growing.
Medical tourism expected to continue growth
Filed under: Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carolyn Lochhead writes that the draw of medical tourism lies with both transparency and affordability and implies that its success shows the need for an overhaul of the U.S. medical system.
She also notes that the reform efforts don’t seem likely to change those two central systematic problems, and thus medical tourism is likely to be here to stay, at least in the foreseeable future. The piece also explores the consumer side of medical tourism, profiling an Oklahoma surgeon who competes on price and transparency.
The article also cites an executive who advises that the economics of going overseas for treatment start making sense when the American price tag for a procedure reaches about $15,000.
Resources
- Controversy follows medical tourism’s top couple
- Story examines risks, rewards for medical tourists
- Self-insured groups may encourage medical tourism
- Tip Sheet - Medical tourism: Trend or aberration
- Article - Health Journalism 2008: Medical tourism - trend or aberration?
- Role of the Internet in medical tourism
- Tip Sheet - Medical Tourism Takes Flight
Controversy follows medical tourism’s top couple
Reuters’ Brendan Borrell profiles Jonathan Edelheit and Renée-Marie Stephano, the 37-year-old lawyers who founded the Medical Tourism Association in 2007 and have ruled the industry ever since. A growing number of industry insiders are grumbling about the couple and their role as the faces of medical tourism.
They cite the couple’s repeated threats of lawsuits, the accusations of unauthorized and sketchy insurance sales that forced Edelheit to cease operations in the state of Washington, and their powerful annual industry conference which critics say enrich Edelheit and Stephano rather than the association or industry.
Resources
- Tip Sheet - Medical tourism: Trend or aberration
- Article - Health Journalism 2008: Medical tourism - trend or aberration?
- Role of the Internet in medical tourism
- Tip Sheet - Medical Tourism Takes Flight
Story examines risks, rewards for medical tourists
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
In a recent story for The Arizona Republic, Ginger Rough paints a clear picture of the advantages and disadvantages of medical tourism from a patient’s point of view. Rough rolls out several positive anecdotes, balancing them with a sober assessment of the potential dangers of going abroad for medical treatment.
The story explains why costs in the United States are so much higher than some other countries and lists the benefits American patients receive in return for higher bills. On the other side of the equation, Rough lays out the possible financial and health benefits and risks incurred by medical tourists.
Resources
- Tip Sheet - Medical tourism: Trend or aberration
- Role of the Internet in medical tourism
- Tip Sheet - Medical Tourism Takes Flight: International Medical Care is Now an Option for Employers
- Article - Health Journalism 2008: Medical tourism - trend or aberration?
Self-insured groups may encourage medical tourism
Joy Robertson looked into medical tourism and posted her findings on Ozarksfirst.com, the Web site of Springfield, Mo.-based stations KOLR and KSFX. She found that self-insured entities like the Assemblies of God Missions can save thousands if members go abroad for health care, and may even waive deductibles for members who choose to do so.
“It probably saves 80 percent of the cost you’d pay in the United States,” [World MedAssist's Wouter] Houberechts says. “As an example, heart bypass in the U.S. would cost about $150,000 for an uninsured patient. Going to India, including airfare and lodging, you could get the procedure for $10,000. For a liver transplant in India, it’s $60,000, which is expensive, but in the U.S. you’d pay about $350,000.”
Why is it cheaper? Less cost for things like labor, construction, equipment and malpractice insurance. Many of the doctors are board certified and trained in the U.S. Even with travel costs, consumers say they come out ahead.
The story includes interviews that Robertson conducted at Health Journalism 2008 in Washington, D.C.
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