15 May
Medical Tourism a Growing Trend Amongst Ageing Baby Boomers
Medical Tourism is a growing trend. Nearly 150,000 Americans travelled abroad in 2007 for international medical care, and numbers drastically increased throughout 2008 and 2009. According to the Medical Tourism Association, an estimated 23 million Americans alone will travel overseas for their medical care by the year 2017, with expenditures of nearly $80 billion dollars. Large numbers of Britons, Canadians, and Middle Eastern citizens of countries such as Iran and Iraq, as well as Afrikaans, are seeking international medical destinations. International medical care has become nearly synonymous with vacation travel to many state-of- the-art, world-class, and famous tourist destinations around the world. Formerly limited traditional medical destinations such as India, Thailand and Singapore have blossomed with growth in the 21st century with newer, high-tech, and world-class facilities located in destinations from the Ukraine, Turkey, and Jordan, to South Africa, the Mediterranean, Switzerland, South America, and new Asian destinations such as South Korea, Japan, and Malaysia. Baby boomers travelling to international destinations may save tens of thousands of dollars on the same treatments performed in the U.S., Canada and Britain, while it the same time receiving state of the art, high-tech and qualified care. For example, single heart bypass surgery, depending on severity, may cost an average of $25,000 to $40,000 in the United States, while an individual travelling to destinations such as India may receive such care for approximately $10,000. A knee replacement in the United States may cost 35,000 to $40,000 per knee, while knee replacement surgeries and procedures in destinations such as Costa Rica, charge 1/4 to 1/2 same price, all the while providing certified, accredited, experienced, and highly trained surgeons, and high-tech facilities (article here).
