Have you ever wondered what a trip to Central America might be like? On a motorcycle? For dental care?!

BridgeHealth International client Doug French tells his two-wheeled story on his blog:

“About four years ago I went to a dentist in the states with the idea that after years of either neglect or simply not having the money or insurance to keep up on my teeth, I was going to do what ever it took to get them up to where they needed to be. I was working on a very good case of periodontal disease that I didn’t even know about. Mainly due to not going to the dentist enough, getting my teeth cleaned regularly, and other bad habits like diet and smoking.The amount of money just for a crown, let alone a root canal or an implant, as most people know in the states is very expensive. To look at having to get several, well, it seemed not even worth looking at for where I was at during that time in my life.

So I started my journey back to trying to recover my teeth and have a healthy mouth once again.”

Read Doug’s entire post from the back of his Vulcan 750 at: http://freedomthrumovement.blogspot.com/2008/12/dentista.html

As of this morning, a Google search for “medical tourism” returns 1.8 million results. If a reader spent one minute on each page, for eight hours a day, it would take more than a decade to get to the end … and by that time there will probably be some more millions of results.

One of the mantras of medical tourism, as far as advice to people who are thinking about going overseas for healthcare, is “Do Your Homework.” Everyone says it. If you think I’m exaggerating — another Google search, this time for “medical tourism” and “Do Your Homework,” turns up 2,400 references. That’s a lot better than 1.8 million but it’s still a lot to go through for what is liable to be very much the same thing, over and over again, with the possibility that you aren’t going to find what you really want at all.

In the research biz, we call this data smog, a term probably coined and certainly popularized by David Shenk in 1997. As an author, I have learned to live with data smog. Once upon a time, people wrote books about particular subjects because not enough information was available about them. More often in the Internet age, books are written because too much information is available and someone hits on the good idea of winnowing it down. When I wrote Beauty from Afar in 2005-06, medical tourism was somewhere in between those two things and the book’s narrative was shaped accordingly. There are a lot of things in it that hardly anyone knew about, and also a lot about how to find medical information online. Today, there are books such as those in Joe Woodman’s Patients Beyond Borders series, which are more directory-like and represent more of an effort to bring good information out of the smog.

Part of what medical travel companies such as BridgeHealth International consciously do, part of what they bring to the table for consumers, is that they are soldiers in the war on data smog. They travel, accumulate good information, choose hospitals, facilities, surgeons and doctors on behalf of prospective patients; who in turn travel, undergo medical procedures, give valuable feedback on their own experiences.

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It took me a full day to decide whether or not the above headline worked for me at all. Undeniably, the European Commission, which has broad power over economic policy for most of Europe, is supporting transnational regulation for healthcare in the 27-member European Union (EU). (News link)

Almost immediately upon the announcement of the proposal, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) was freaking out.

“Millions of patients will be able to travel abroad for free medical treatment within three years under European plans,” was the breathless lead in The Telegraph, which went on to say:

The new rules will allow patients to buy hospital, outpatient or dental treatment in any EU country and send the bill to the National Health Service.

Experts predicted that the rules could spark an exodus of patients from the NHS due to concerns about long waiting times and hospital superbugs.

Once adopted the new laws will give patients the right to claim back the cost of any medical procedure up to the amount it would have cost in their home country.

Further down in the article, the NHS had its say:

“… Health Secretary Alan Johnson is fighting for the right to make patients obtain NHS permission in advance for major operations.

The health department said: ‘We are absolutely committed to ensuring that the NHS retains the ability to decide what care it will fund.’

The proposal represents a potential boon to medical travel and tourism businesses and facilities in Eastern Europe especially, along with perhaps Portugal, Spain and those Western European countries that have lower costs than Great Britain — along with no waiting lists, for which the NHS is notorious. The reaction from India was also immediate — the EU proposal was called a “major setback” to Indian medical tourism, which has been courting NHS outsourcing for years now.

Can the NHS and Britain buck the Commission? Perhaps. The proposal isn’t set in stone. But there is a certain aura of inevitability about medical tourism in Europe …

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The Northern Colorado Business Report last week did a story about medical travel and tourism that featured Jennifer Blankenship, a sufferer of multiple sclerosis who needs stem cell therapy. The cost in the United States: $100,000.

The cost in Costa Rica for the equivalent treatment: $7,000.

The article link:

Medical Tourism Could Cure High Costs

Blankenship is heading to Costa Rica next month. The article, by health issues reporter Steve Porter, also spends some time talking about U.S. insurance companies and medical tourism: When will they start bringing it under their umbrella, as a care option? Perhaps soon, according to Daryl Richard, vice president of communications for UnitedHealth International.

“UnitedHealth International is currently researching the many issues and challenges related to medical travel and hopes to decide within a few months whether it will design a formal medical travel product for its customers,” Richard is quoted as saying.