The Atrium at Artemis Hospital, our medical tourism destination.
Medical tourism? I can almost hear you ask incredulously. Yes..says yours truly. It is definitely a booming industry. In fact, our visit to India for was for medical tourism, and no..it is not a tour of medical equipment or traditional medicine men, but a profitable business in developing countries. India is not only about the Taj Mahal or the other wonderful sights, it is also about excellent medical care.
The International room. We spent a lot of hours in there :-)
Medical tourism has been around for a while, a long while actually. In the good old days, the norm was for people from underdeveloped or third world countries to seek medical help in the developed countries such as the United States and England if they could afford it. The reasons for doing so differed. For some, it was a matter of perception , that medical care is better in the first world setting. For others, it might be that the specific medical equipment needed might not be readily available in their own country. Many people also considered it essential for bragging rights, after all, it sounds cool to say you actually flew to the U.S for some surgery 
. Nowadays though, the tide has changed. Medical care in first world countries has become so insanely expensive that a lot of people are shut out of seeking medical care. A lot of so called third world countries have picked up the slack and now offer affordable healthcare in their own countries, using state of the art equipment.
Isolation room at Artemis hospital.
I first noticed it several years ago while still working as a pharmacist. I would have some patients come in for extra supply of medications and in conversing with them would discover that they were headed to exotic places like Costa Rica, Thailand, and India to undergo surgeries like hip replacement and organ transplants. You have probably heard of people heading to places like Mexico and Brazil for vanity cosmetic surgeries. Some had no insurance and were self paying. Some, however had insurance and were going with the blessing of the insurance companies who doled out Visa cards for the patient to charge on.
I won’t disclose names of the insurance companies, but think big..very big..yep! Big!!! It was way cheaper for the companies to pay for the flight of the patient, spouse or caretaker to say Israel, have the operation, private room, rehabilitation etc..total first class care than to have them do the operation in the U.S. For instance, a liver transplant costs north of $375,000!!! Most patients would have a copay that could amount to thousands. I asked the co-ordination here how much one would cost here…$45,000!!!! Do you now see why it is more cost effective to outsource it? The disparity is mind boggling <img src="http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/1f609.png" alt="