We may need to ensure that the insurance company or whoever is arranging (and benefiting from) the overseas surgery has a contract for stateside followup. Otherwise, we may find these problems landing in our laps.

Well , Certainly yes , especially in my country , where patients has powerless , useless papers called ” informed consents and all its about a Propaganda of a Perfect American Doctor . comes over seas

Though my reply on this topic , is NOT all of the medical and health care can be at Tourism , especially my country itself known as 1st Medical Tourism in the area , with less care of their own civilians , but i believe , the patients will need to follow up , at their own countries .

I am not sure who is going to do this in the US. US doctors are not likely to do so UNLESS they get something out of the deal. Additionally, follow-up is a major issue, again falling on a US physician when the patient is back in the US.

Unless larger companies or insurance companies what to establish physician practices to do the things above, I think the US physicians still hold the keys to the kingdom on this.

As such, I think there will be some procedures viewed as standard that go offshore and a few here and there, but by and large, procedures will stay in the US. Those do go offshore are likely to only be spillover from the lack of physicians in the US as the population ages.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010300030.html

I wouldn’t write off the USA’s ability to compete on this field, unless the government makes it impossible. I wouldn’t put it past this coming administration.

My pet idea FWIW is this sort of medical tourism should be done on American Indian reservation land. They are capable of exempting themselves from so much of the rules that hamstring American medicine.

Torts, HIPAA, etc., they can write their own rules to a large extent, if they want to. Run hospitals instead of casinos. I say it would be one of the best things to happen to Native Americans in a long time.

But you know what they say about opinions and a$$holes.

BTW I know I already have a N=1 example of a patient who engaged in foreign medical tourism, suffered a complication, and no one in the state will touch him now.

And many times insurances won’t pay anything for complications because they say it’s part of the global.