No health insurance? Go overseas for surgery    

Source: http://www.debianhelp.org/node/12457 

Tags: Political Economy

This can happen to anyone. When will we, as a nation, provide plane fare to the extremely sick?

Imagine flying half way around the world for medical help that your fellow citizens deny you. Heart surgery is not done in the free emergency rooms that aren't free. They send you a bill for services.

All of the uninsured atheists should pick and attend a church because that maybe the only thing that saves you.

No health insurance? Go overseas for surgery

11:27 PM CST on Tuesday, December 18, 2007

By Shern-Min Chow / 11 News

David Jones, shown in a family provided photo, went to India to get a triple heart bypass operation.

Roughly, one in every six Americans, or 47 million of us, does not have health insurance. Many are those who earn too much for Medicaid and too little to buy their own policy, or simply can’t if they have pre-existing conditions.

So what if you are facing serious medical problems? Even life or death?

David Jones, who remodels homes, puts his heart into his work. That’s because for five months, he couldn’t.

“I had three clogged arteries,” he said.

The self-employed contractor had his second heart attack in June. The first time, his family had health insurance — but not now.

“The difference is security versus paralyzing fear,” said Jones’ wife Bobi.

Jones needed a triple bypass that would have cost about $250,000. Two hundred fifty grand he didn’t have.

His wife said the hospital’s response was: “They send him home to die,” she said.

Desperate, they began looking into a friend’s suggestion, surgery overseas. They checked several medical travel Internet sites, then approached their cardiologist.

Dr. Anil Ohdav’s diagnosis: “there’s the 99 percent narrowing; there’s the 80 percent blockage right there. Certainly it’s a very good option for him because of the fact he had exhausted all his options in Houston.”

Dr. Ohdav, who said he is not connected with any of these ventures, advised Jones on how to do an Internet investigation. He added that the U.S. joint commission that credentials American hospitals now credentials foreign hospitals.

“A lot of the physicians that do this are trained in the U.S. and Europe,” said Dr. Odhav.

The Jones settled on Healthbase, and a hospital in New Dehli, India. Dr. Odhav worked by phone and e-mail with the surgeons there. Turns out, he’s had four previous uninsured patients go overseas for surgery.

Regardless, when Jones and his brother arrived, it was odd mix of old and new.

“There’s that old EKG with the old suction cups,” said David Jones.

But the surgical suites and other areas had modern equipment.

That includes a nuclear camera used to take pictures of the heart found in a Houston hospital. The same kind of high tech equipment is used by hospitals in the Far East, purchased sometimes for as little as one-third of the price that U.S. hospitals pay for them.

That, along with lower labor, lower or even the lack of malpractice lawsuits and overhead costs, meant everything was cheaper — from drugs like a generic Plavix, to the operation and travel expenses.

It’s a cost savings with which even some U.S. insurance companies are now experimenting.

Healthnet and BlueShield they have actually issued some policies that will allow patients to go across the border to get certain kinds of health care.

But nothing would’ve been possible if not for the family’s church. Westland Baptist and the Jones’ friends raised all the funds.

David Jones’ good fortune continues. His surgery seems successful. He and his family are grateful he can work and play again.