Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-28/heart-surgery-in-india-for-1-583-costs-106-385-in-u-s-.html


Indian philanthropist, cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya, Devi Prasad Shetty, during an interview at the cardiac-care hospital in Bangalore.

Devi Shetty is obsessed with making heart surgery affordable for millions of Indians. On his office desk are photographs of two of his heroes: Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

Shetty is not a public health official motivated by charity. He’s a heart surgeon turned businessman who has started a chain of 21 medical centers around India. By trimming costs with such measures as buying cheaper scrubs and spurning air-conditioning, he has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago, and wants to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“It shows that costs can be substantially contained,” said Srinath Reddy, president of the Geneva-based World Heart Federation, of Shetty’s approach. “It’s possible to deliver very high quality cardiac care at a relatively low cost.”

Medical experts like Reddy are watching closely, eager to see if Shetty’s driven cost-cutting can point the way for hospitals to boost revenue on a wider scale by making life-saving heart operations more accessible to potentially millions of people in India and other developing countries.

[Mojorabbit]

1. I am of two minds on this

I used to be a nurse. Once you start doing deep cuts you can end up with shoddy care. Good staff are not cheap. Quality instruments and medicines are not either. I guess it depends on where he does his next round of cuts.

[RB TexLa]

2. We are told American doctors love their patients. Ask your doctor if they will give up air

conditioning to help lower costs for their beloved patients.

I couldn't stop laughing just typing that out. I bet you ask that of a US based doctor they would have you thrown out of their office.

[FarCenter]

3. The patients and nurses give up air conditioning - doctors? not always.

A 300-bed, pre-fabricated, single-story hospital in the city of Mysore cost $6 million and took six months for construction company Larsen & Toubro Ltd. to build, Shetty said. Only the hospital’s operating theaters and intensive-care units are air-conditioned, to reduce energy costs.

[moparlunatic]

4. No arguement that

medical is way overpriced but if I needed a heart surgery it would be in the U.S. not in India at some "Doc in the Box" chain.

[Waiting For Everyman]

5. We don't have costs, we have extortion.

There's no way to cut that except to make it illegal.

There's no way a patient should be charged more for an item than it costs in a local retail store. And for specialty items and services, it shouldn't cost more than it does in another first-world country. We aren't anywhere even remotely close to that.

The gross overcharging is unconscionable, it is obvious, and it needs to stop.

Another thing that needs to stop is the collection procedures against people who can't pay these ridiculous prices, and the destruction of people's credit solely because of unpayable medical bills.

A couple of intelligent laws could change this immediately. It is theft, pure and simple. It is criminal, and it is life-threatening.

[TBA]

6. To your point...

recently had lab tests. The total cost? Right at 4000.00. The amount billed to my insurance? About 400.00 (and I still had to pay 136.00 of that myself).

So the lab still made a profit on the 400.00 most certainly. But someone w/o insurance would have had to pay the 4000.00. That is extortion IMO.

[treestar]

7. Huge difference, but what is it due to?

What is the difference in quality/safety?

[dipsydoodle]

8. Another example here

WARSAW, Ind. — Michael Shopenn’s artificial hip was made by a company based in this remote town, a global center of joint manufacturing. But he had to fly to Europe to have it installed.

Mr. Shopenn, 67, an architectural photographer and avid snowboarder, had been in such pain from arthritis that he could not stand long enough to make coffee, let alone work. He had health insurance, but it would not cover a joint replacement because his degenerative disease was related to an old sports injury, thus considered a pre-existing condition.
Throughout this article, readers have shared their experiences by responding to questions on joint replacements and health care. Comments are now closed, but you may explore the responses received. I will write a follow-up article about your comments on Monday, Aug. 5.
— Elisabeth Rosenthal, Reporter

Desperate to find an affordable solution, he reached out to a sailing buddy with friends at a medical device manufacturer, which arranged to provide his local hospital with an implant at what was described as the “list price” of $13,000, with no markup. But when the hospital’s finance office estimated that the hospital charges would run another $65,000, not including the surgeon’s fee, he knew he had to think outside the box, and outside the country.

“That was a third of my savings at the time,” Mr. Shopenn said recently from the living room of his condo in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t happening.”

“Very leery” of going to a developing country like India or Thailand, which both draw so-called medical tourists, he ultimately chose to have his hip replaced in 2007 at a private hospital outside Brussels for $13,660. That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/health/for-medical-tourists-simple-math.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0