Has Your Employer Added Medical Vacations to Your Medical Coverage?

More Employers Adding Medical Vacation Coverage to Benefits Packages

If your employer hasn’t added medical vacations to your coverage, be patient.  A growing number of companies are beginning to fund medical tourism to places like Thailand, India, or Singapore for low priced medical procedures ranging from braces to ear surgery.  An increasing wave of US patients—over 750,000 in 2007 alone—have travelled abroad for affordable medical treatment.  As a testament to the continued growth of medical tourism, those numbers are expected to reach 6 million or more by the year 2016.  Rather than miss out on the tremendous opportunity to save and inexpensively incentivize employees, businesses are opting to add, rather than shun, traveling abroad for health care.   

Cost Savings in Thailand May Mean Safer Health Care For You

Despite concerns that low priced health care might mean that your ear, knee, or breast surgery would lack the quality you'd expect back home, medical tourism destination countries like Thailand have actually been able to mirror, if not improve the quality and safety of health care at lower prices than in the United States, Canada, or many European countries.  Countries practicing medical tourism have leveraged the low costs of labor and living to optimize technology, facilities, and medical staffs.  For example, in the United States, 71 cents per dollar spent on health care covers personnel costs, as opposed to 18 cents per dollar in medical tourism destination countries.  In turn, some foreign hospitals can provide safer, higher quality health care for far less than patients would receive at home. 

Imagine a Medical Vacation to Thailand “on” Your Employer

Those destination countries aren’t the only ones cashing in on the medical tourism phenomenon.  Employers have been exploring the advantages of including medical vacation coverage to their benefits packages to save money.  As a patient, that means, not only can you save significant amounts of money on your medical care, but you may also be able to take a “vacation” under your new coverage in the near future.  In a sense, the savings trickle up when employers add medical vacations to coverage plans.  With critical economic times, medical tourism may be an even stronger tool in lowering health care costs and getting the country back on its feet financially.  

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