Over 46 million people in USA do not have health insurance and the number keeps increasing. MSNBC published a recent article on experts opinion on this. Here are some quotes from the article:

"There are many factors that lead to the fact that our health care system if the most expensive in the world. First, we pay more for many things, such as physicians’ salaries and drugs, than most people in the world. So even if we used the same amount of services, our health care system will cost more.

But we also do a lot more here – more tests, more surgeries, more procedures – than nearly anywhere else in the world. You might ask if this is good or bad. In many ways it’s a good thing. Just ask anyone with chronic hip pain from osteoarthritis whether it was good to get a hip replacement.

We also, unfortunately, have a lot of unnecessary care, such as surgeries and tests that are not likely to benefit patients. While this is something that we would all like to eliminate, it would be hard to do so without rationing care.

This extra testing can result from doctors practicing defensive medicine to avoid malpractice suits. Studies have shown that this accounts for no more than 2 percent or 3 percent of health care costs, which amounts to about $40 billion to $60 billion. That is a lot of money, but it still doesn’t justify the notion that malpractice reform would have a dramatic effect on health care costs.

Another factor that drives up the price of health care is the fragmented payer system. The average doctor might be dealing with 15 different insurance companies, so he needs to hire people to take care of billing."

Many of these uninsured and underinsured people started taking advantage of low cost high quality health care that is available abroad. This practice of traveling abroad for medical treatment is called as medical tourism.

Source: MSNBC, Your questions, August 16 2007