At least it seems that way. Today I was reading on a non-healthcare related forum a lot of comments from U.S. residents about how badly they have been screwed over by Obamacare. Not because they have to sign up for it, but because as a result of the new law the insurance plans they had were canceled or drastically modified with associated huge increases in cost. Since I am not subject to the disaster I have not followed the details but it seems that the abomination that is Obamacare requires all insurance plans to cover things like pregnancy related services even if you are a man and obviously cannot use those services. There are other things that you don’t want, like coverage for drug rehabilitation. Premiums are forced to be the same for men and women. What an abomination.

But that’s not the point of this post. When one commenter talked about the shellacking he is going to take for the rotator cuff surgery he needs I decided to take a look at how the costs in Thailand would compare. Over at Healthcare Bluebook they say the fair price for that procedure would be US$6,794. Then I checked out Bumrungrad Hospital’s “Real Cost” page for that. Whoa, US$10,512. What is happening here? Are Bumrungrad’s prices skyrocketing that much? Obviously nobody is going to make trip from the U.S. to Thailand to pay more for surgery. Prices have always been among the highest at Bumrungrad – somebody has to pay for the fancy decor. But are they pricing themselves out of the market.

Unfortunately, I cannot easily get a price comparison from Siriraj, Thailand’s premier orthopedic hospital. Certainly it is much lower cost. Past comparisons were one-half to one-third the price of Bumrungrad. But in this case it better be one-tenth the price or I am missing something. Maybe it is a significantly different procedure????

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 19th, 2013 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Surgery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.