With the cost of health care soaring in the U.S., it’s becoming increasingly popular for Americans to seek out affordable medical treatments abroad. Hotels and resorts have even begun catering directly to medical tourists, offering medical vacation packages that can include everything from post-treatment care in luxurious accommodations to personal chefs.
Michael Lepley, a retired health and safety inspector from Nashville, Tenn., learned he needed a hip replacement in 2014. It wasn’t great timing. At age 63, Lepley did not yet qualify for Medicare at the time, and he had opted out of purchasing a plan on the federal health care marketplace.
Lepley was no stranger to the expense of a major hip operation. He had hip surgery on his right hip in 2009, an operation that cost $119,000. Even with employer-provided insurance, he still left the hospital with a $30,000 bill, largely due to deductibles and copays.
“Two years after the operation I still had bills coming in the mail,” Lepley told MagnifyMoney. To finance his medical bills, he dipped into his savings and sold off some of the sports equipment he had been in too much pain to use.
“I got good quality care, but just the whole process and dealing with the insurance company … It left me a little bit jaded I think,” he says.
For his second operation, he was determined to avoid debt this time around. After doing some research online, Lepley came across a new international hospital in the Cayman Islands that offered orthopedic surgery. After talking with the center’s patient services director by phone and having many Skype video conferences with the medical team, Lepley felt more at ease about pursuing treatment overseas (he brought a close friend along for support). The center helped him make travel arrangements from Nashville to the Cayman Islands and helped him get a reduced rate at a nearby resort, where he convalesced for an additional two weeks after his week-long recovery period at the hospital was up.
The total cost of care, which included the hip replacement, a one-week recovery period at an on-site rehab facility, and two follow-up doctor visits totaled $22,152. Compared to the cost of his first hip surgery before insurance, it was a steal.
“It was a fantastic experience,” says Lepley. “I spent more time face to face with the surgeon at HCCI in a week before I had the operation than I ever did with the surgeon in Nashville.”
He isn’t alone. The so-called medical tourism industry was valued at $10.5 billion in 2012 and is predicted to reach $32.5 billion by 2019.
And there’s good reason: consumers are paying more than ever for medical treatment at home. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projects that the average amount of money spent per person in the U.S. on health care per capita is nearly $10,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. On top of that, growth in health care spending will increase to 5.8% per year over the next decade.
Seeking medical treatment abroad isn’t a decision anyone should make lightly. Reports of botched surgeries abroad can be sobering reminders of what can go wrong.