Students beginning to travel overseas for cheaper medical services

By: Lauren Kawam

Posted: 2/21/08

That time of year has come again when you're making plans with your friends about where you want to go for spring break, buying new swim suits, stocking up on the essentials for the big car ride and … planning a medical procedure in a foreign country?

Instead of going on that classic road trip to Rocky Point with friends, recently some students have been going abroad for operations. This trend is aptly named medical tourism.

"It is a term used to describe pre-planned travel abroad to receive a pre-planned surgery," said Patrick Marsek, the managing director of MedRetreat, the premier medical tourism company.

Josef Woodman, author of the medical tourism how-to guide Patients Beyond Borders, wrote that as many as 150,000 Americans, Canadians and Europeans packed up their bags last year to get medical procedures performed by foreign doctors overseas.

Woodman also said that students may elect to go abroad, but for different reasons than their elderly counterparts.

"Most medical travelers are 40+ years old, [but] perhaps for sports injuries, weight loss surgeries and elective procedures such as dental and cosmetic surgeries" students would be motivated to go abroad, Woodman said.

When outlining its appeal, Marsek said lower costs of healthcare are the main push to get procedures done in foreign countries.

"Our daily life in the US, it can be overwhelming, and worrying about healthcare is not something that I, personally, want to be doing," Marsek said.

There are an estimated 47 million underinsured/uninsured people in this country and, as a result, a lot of people have two options: not receiving health insurance at all and trying to pay for it themselves or going abroad to get decent healthcare at more than decent prices.

Eduardo De Los Heros, an undecided Arizona State University freshman, said that he had some insurance, but not enough to cover the procedure he needed, so he decided to go to overseas to get an operation.

"Funding is a big issue when needing to get procedures done," Marsek said. "College kids need to know their options" when it comes to affordable healthcare.

De Los Heros went to Lima, Peru, during summer of 2006 to get teeth removed because they were not fitting correctly inside his mouth.

"The cost thing was a lot of the reason why I went and I just wanted to get it taken care of," De Los Heros said.

De Los Heros was 17 years old when he got the procedure, so his mother, father, sister and brother all came along.

"I don't see why people wouldn't get surgeries done [overseas]," De Los Heros said. "When you can get the whole family done for $400 dollars, why not?"

Erin Traeger, a recent graduate from ASU who currently lives on the Balkan Peninsula, has been medically treated in both Macedonia and Bosnia and empathized with those who have affordability concerns.

"I can tell you it's a whole lot cheaper to get your dental work done out in Macedonia than it is back [in Arizona], even with insurance," Traeger said. "And if you don't have medical insurance, it's definitely cheaper to get health care in other countries."

For many, though, the perception lingers that foreign hospitals have lower standards than their US counterparts.

De Los Heros said that he was not worried about being abroad in a foreign hospital.

"It wasn't like I was like 'Oh my God, I might get a disease from those needles,'" De Los Heros said. "I was totally comfortable with it."

Marsek says credible companies offering medical tourism should be identifying quality hospitals that are "conducive to medical tourism" and that customers should be impressed with the level of research and effort that goes into forming a relationship with international hospitals.

Marsek said that medical tourism could shine a light on the growing problem of medical care in America.

"It is a catalyst for change in the healthcare system in the US," Marsek said. "Perhaps America will become the chosen destination for procedures in the future."