Shopping for care

Medical tourism is when a patient travels outside of his or her local vicinity to receive care elsewhere. Generally, people think of medical tourism as visiting a foreign country, but KFF Health News published an article about someone in the US traveling to another state (from Maine to Maryland). One of the patient's local option estimated a cost near $23,000 to treat his hernia. The patient ended up selecting a surgery center and ended up paying less than $5,000 (including travel costs). One difference between the two options is that the local option would have been performed laparoscopically, and "Laparoscopic procedures generally cost more because surgeons use more advanced tools." Nevertheless, that patient "was fully recovered within two weeks," so the benefit of laparoscopy might not have made much functional difference in this case.

Many in the country do not shop for medical procedures because they have health insurance and the difference in out-of-pocket costs might not be substantial. However, as health insurance premiums rise, more people will be tempted to do as what the patient profiled in this article did.