You will not agree with what they say below, but it’s interesting reading:

“Another Health Care Myth Bites the Dust”

People who oppose sweeping health care reform often try to score easy points with some variation of this statement: “American health care is the best in the world. People come from all over to see the doctors in the United States.” The reasons people come here, we are told, are shorter wait times, superior technology, and better-trained doctors.

The problem is, this is not entirely true. According to Medical Tourism: Consumers in Search of Value, a report recently published by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, the number of Americans leaving the United States to get medical treatment far exceeds the number of foreigners coming in. In 2007,  750,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical treatment, while only 400,000 foreign patients sought care in the U.S. This means health care now joins a host of American industries that add to the U.S. trade deficit – that is, we buy more units of medical treatment in other countries than other countries buy from us.

Deloitte predicts that the trend towards outbound medical tourism will continue in coming years. At the current rate of growth, there will be 6 million outbound trips by 2010, while inbound medical visits will only reach about 450,000. Thus, as the pundits extol the worldwide appeal of our great health system, U.S. citizens are voting with their feet, choosing international care in greater and greater numbers.

Details at: http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=33011

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