High quality heart surgery for $1800. Why aren't insurers paying attention to and globalizing our care? - Charschan Chiropractic in North Brunswick, NJ and Scotch Plains, NJ

High quality heart surgery for $1800. Why aren’t insurers paying attention to and globalizing our care?

The USA has the best healthcare system in the world, right? Is it the best or the most expensive?

Sometimes when we hear about what surgeries cost in other countries for replacement knees or other medical interventions, we often are prejudiced by the idea that the healthcare system in other countries is less safe or effective, yet current data suggests otherwise.

We are perhaps the most overpriced and inefficient system in the world. If insurers wanted to lower the overall cost of care and insurance, why aren’t they offering lower cost options that may include surgeries in other countries that can sometimes by less than 1/10th of the cost here.

Our largely inefficient system, has doctors tangled up in so many rules and regulations just to get paid, and then they sometimes find themselves chasing after the income they should have had from doing the procedure. A recent article in the Huffington post that lays out what it takes to get a simple flu shot paid illustrates the problem even with a low priced item. Layers and layers of rules is clearly not a great way to run healthcare, and as many Americans already know, we are paying through the nose for a system that is clearly broken, with no insurance industry solution making it better. Offering foreign travel and treat opportunities may be a refreshing change that can help us where it counts; with our insurance premiums.

While the cost of living in countries such as India is clearly less, taking this idea to our overpriced healthcare system makes sense, especially as we learn about how good these countries are in producing highly skilled doctors and nursing staff who can offer a safe alternative to an expensive healthcare facility in the USA.

Check out this recent article in USA Today.

U.S. health care needs a wakeup call from India: Column
Robert Pearl 7:03 a.m. ET Jan. 29, 2017

In Bangalore, India, heart surgeons perform daily state-of-the-art heart surgery on adults and children at an average cost of $1,800. For the record, that’s about 2% of the $90,000 that the average heart surgery costs in the United States. And when it comes to the quality of the heart surgery, the patient outcomes are among the best in the world.

I visited India during Thanksgiving week to meet with Dr. Devi Shetty. He’s the heart surgeon who served as personal physician to Mother Teresa and now runs Narayana Health, with 20 hospitals in India. I wanted see what the United States could learn from medical innovations undertaken halfway around the world, and how he achieves these impressive clinical results at such a low price.