College Times

Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Ryan Ruiz

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.

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