Should Insurance Companies Be Outsourcing Your Health Care?

Question

In the U.S., health care costs are getting so high that some businesses and insurance companies are starting to eye the potential savings of outsourcing health care.

"It's just one of the many ways in which our world is flattening," said Arnold Milstein, chief physician at New York-based Mercer Health & Benefits who's researching the feasibility of outsourcing medical care for three Fortune 500 corporations. "Many companies see it as a natural extension of the competition they've faced in other aspects of their business."

Blue Shield of California and Health Net of California is now offering lower-cost policies allowing members to seek medical care in Mexico. Florida-based United Group Programs, which sells self-insurance policies to small businesses, offers a plan that sends patients to Bumrungrad International hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. It says the plan will save employers more than 50 percent on major medical costs and slash employees' out-of-pocket expenses to zero.

AP
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/05/business/AS_FEA_MED_India_Outsourcing_Health.php

Answer 1

Americans have been told for the last 20 years not to worry about manufacturing jobs leaving the US, they were being replaced by high tech and service jobs. When customer service and tech support jobs were contracted to S Asia, we were told these weren't really the kind of white collar jobs Americans wanted anyway. Now we have to leave the country to get professional services? Come, on, this is globalization for the sake of globalization, MBA's justifying their salaries and their business trips.

Answer 2

If health insurance companies started paying for airplane tickets, how many nanoseconds do you think it would take for someone to start faking a medical condition in order to get a free trip to somewhere that they wanted to go on vacation? An emergency room should be used only for things that need immediate treatment and cannot wait long enough for the person to get from the U.S. to the Philippines. The airlines won't allow passengers to board an airplane during a medical emergency, because of the risk that the patient might not be able to wait until the plane reached its destination, and they might have to land the plane early to get the patient to a hospital wherever the plane was. Finally, you are wrong about the risk of doing nothing. A person in the U.S. without insurance is no more likely to die than a person in the U.S. with insurance. And there are probably more deaths in the U.S. from doing too much than from doing nothing.

Answer 3

no insurance company's should not be able to sub-contract you out to other companies because in the end ,or after you have been to your appointment or to your procedure, you will get 3 to 4 different bills from company's that you have never even heard of and payments get messed up and you don't know who has done what, or what they have done and after that, you have that many more bills or payments that come also and you haven't seen any of these people.It is just what it sounds like big corporate company's try to save themselves money and costing the tax payers more and using more of our natural resources (trees) that is not necessary, in the end it is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Answer 4

Unless you work for a major hospital, all health care coverage is outsourced.