American Women Flock to Thai Hospital
Medical tourism from the American woman’s perspective has been reported on in Women’s e-News and one particularly interesting article discusses the experiences of several women who sought treatment at Bumrungrad International Hospital. The details of those experiences really tell the story of why medical tourism is so popular. From the article:
June Flowers suffered from a herniated disk and was in constant severe pain. She could not afford the $30,000 operation and it made no sense to purchase insurance because this was a pre-existing condition and would not be covered. She saw a story about Burmrungrad Hospital on television, made a few calls, and a few weeks later had back surgery in Thailand at a cost of $3,500. A few days later she was back home and pain free. And it wasn’t only the low cost that impressed Flowers. “At home, I would buzz the nurse and it would take 40 minutes for her to come,” says Flowers. “At Bumrungrad, it took four minutes, and four nurses would race to my side.”
When she flew to Bumrungrad last year for a $3,000 bladder surgery that would have cost her $25,000 at home, Martie Balmer of Boise, Idaho, also threw in a $1,400 eye tuck. “I couldn’t afford either surgery in America,” says Balmer, a 52-year-old hairstylist. “But my bills at Bumrungrad were so low that I was able to not only pay for these treatments, but take a girlfriend and myself on a two-week beach vacation in southern Thailand. The total cost was less than half of what I would normally pay for bladder surgery alone.”
The cost equation is analyzed in the Women’s e-News article with the two biggest factors keeping costs down being lower wages and malpractice insurance premiums. However, the article gets some of the numbers very wrong. They say that the average Thai citizen survives on $2 per day. Not quite. Even the lowest paid agricultural day laborer makes 160 baht per day, which is about $4.50. So the author is off by more than a factor of two on that number. And the author also says that most Thais rely on the government-sponsored health program which costs only $7 per visit. She is off by a factor of 10 on that number. The government-sponsored health care program is called the “30-baht scheme” because a visit costs 30 baht, about 75 cents.
Aside from the numerical inaccuracies, the article is a good read and gives a sense of the quality of care you could expect at Bumrungrad and the other large private hospitals in Thailand.
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