Sometimes, you can’t go it alone and get satisfaction. Individual consumers with complaints, however valid, are rarely a match for the sort of colossal indifference that a big corporation or government entity can routinely bring to bear on a problem.

And most medical tourists and travelers go it alone. I know I did, in 2004. I did my research. I talked to other people who had been overseas for healthcare. I vetted my doctor. And I went, and I had a great experience.

But what if something had gone wrong — if I had been unhappy with my treatment or had complications? I like and trust my doctors; I know they would have done everything they could to “make it right.” But I have no way of knowing what would have happened, really.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran a story about a patient, Betty Meisel of Portland, Oregon, who went to Thailand in 2005 for plastic surgery and had things go wrong. The hospital, perhaps the best-known destination for international patients, claimed three years later to have not received the email she says she sent back then regarding her terrible surgical outcomes. When contacted by a reporter in April, the hospital did write to Meisel and issued a refund.

Which didn’t make everything OK, of course, though it was something.

Years ago, stories like Betty’s were more the rule than the exception, when reporters wrote about medical tourism. This was not because the medical facilities and doctors overseas were bad, but because reporters didn’t know enough to place a single bad outcome in context. The “news value” would be the oddness of someone going overseas for surgery, and the media treated bad surgical outcomes almost with a “what else would you expect?” kind of demeanor. The media learned, over time, and stopped reporting the small percentage of bad results as the norm. Bumrungrad International, in fact, has a reported complication rate that any U.S. hospital would be proud to match.

But that doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong for a patient, either overseas or afterwards, back home.

Among the arguments for arranging medical travel through a company such as BridgeHealth International, rather than going it alone, is that a good medical travel company is also an advocate for the patient, looking out for a client’s welfare each step of the way.

In reading the Post’s story, I was left with disquieting questions about how Betty’s case was handled. But I was also struck by the portrayal for how profoundly alone and unassisted she seemed. I have no wish to blame the victim for her ill fortune; nor do I know if her bad outcomes could have been averted if she’d had other advice. But it is hard not to think that things could have, should have, turned out differently, if Betty had the right people on her side.