Health care is ridiculously cheap in Thailand compared to the US. A hospital visit a little outside of Bangkok cost me about 1500 baht ($40), including medication. It was a simple out-patient procedure, but I'm sure it would have been several hundred dollars if I had to pay out of pocket for the same procedure in the US.
Also, prescription medications are fairly cheap and you generally don't need a prescription. I got my allergy medication for $20, which is normally about $60 here if you don't have insurance.
The above shows how we are being suckered in the US. The requirement of good healthcare in our old age is held over us like a looming axe. The fact that it is so expensive is a subtle form of debt slavery. Personal wealth is basically required of us just to feel safe from dying in squalor.
I have also seen, firsthand, the spectre of death by infection being used as a kind of fortuitous (for healthcare companies) euthanasia (read: cost-cutting method) on infirm and elderly ethnic minorities. My girlfriend's father was pushed into hospice care, even though he was not ready to give up. (He'd been metastatic for 11 years.) The hospice nurses had sloppy anti-infection practices. (My girlfriend's an epidemiologist, so she knows what these are professionally.) There was a week's delay from the first symptoms of infection to getting a prescription for antibiotics filled, and by the time the script was filled, he was barely able to stay conscious to take one dose of the pills. Then there was a refusal to give him intravenous antibiotics, because it was against their procedures, so would need a doctor's permission. By that time, it was Friday evening, and the nurse told us we would've had to wait until Monday to get that permission. In the several days it takes us to figure all this out, the nurse is telling us, "He's actively dying," as if it was the cancer!
The whole thing feels like the time I found a cat with sepsis in its head, took it to the vet, then let them talk me into having them euthanize it. It knew something was up. Started yowling when we made the decision. The saccharine talk from the caregivers was the same -- purporting to be in the patient's best interest when it was really about money.
Then, there's the matter of my grandma, who was an Alzheimer's patient at the end of her life. She also died of an infection. As a youth, she was a waif, a socialite beauty of pre WWII Seoul, and even in her 70s, she was still waifish. She died fat, overfed by redneck nursing home nurses who didn't bother to prevent her bedsores. At first, my family tried to care for her in the home, but she needed to be supervised all the time. She kept on putting water on to boil, then wandering off. My dad's a doctor, a local healthcare insider, and for awhile she got better care because of his attention. He'd visit her every day and make corrections to her care constantly. But you can't keep that up. A week of inattention, and he gets a call that she's dying of an infection with the suggestion that, "it's just better to let her go." I only find out about this years later, when I am desperately calling my dad for advice about my girlfriend's dad and his infection.
I grew up in a small town, and my parents once mentioned there were people muttering about my grandmother getting benefits, because she was a foreigner, despite the fact that my dad was living locally and paying taxes in a high bracket for over 30 years.
More anecdotes, but not infection related:
Another friend of mine, born in England, just over 60, a vigorous woman who volunteered with a local fire department and ran an arts organization full time -- she had to pony up over $10,000 to get attention for a treatable ailment that was going to leave her blind. Apparently it wasn't covered. She'd just gotten her US citizenship two years ago, a day we celebrated, but the whole experience with US healthcare upset her, and for awhile she was talking about leaving and moving back to England.
Yet another friend of mine, a young woman of 25, fell from an atrium balcony. She came from a poor family, but she was basically a saint minus 3 miracles. Her family kept her on a respirator for a week, then let the doctors talk them into pulling the plug. Her loss still haunts me. The whole church was full of people from all walks of life she'd touched. The diversity of people she knew was amazing, and no one was there out of mere politeness. There were also 6 monks there who she sometimes worked with, also in tears. I thought the priest was going to deliver a dry, canned eulogy, but he even got choked up. I suspect if the US didn't have crappy healthcare, that wonderful woman would be in a wheelchair but still with us.
telcos and healthcare are two heavily regulated industries with artificially high barriers to entry in the US. thus the providers jack costs WAY up because they can. We're too dumb to put up a fuss. the average person's response? we need more regulation. yeah, make it impossible for startups to compete in the industry, that'll drive prices down.
At one point in time, the HMO pioneer Group Health was a startup of a sort.
One never hears about someone going bankrupt from paying for medical care in Japan. They have a lot of regulations on what you can charge for health care.
1. You are currently barred by the state from doing this.
2. Your negotiating power as an individual is greater than that of the private insurance companies who are already doing this?
You can complain all you like about the cost of healthcare, but I think it's economics not legislation that is preventing you from getting a better rate.
Concerning 1), many useful practices which would lower cost are barred by the state.
Some states (e.g. NY) ban catastrophic-only health insurance.
All states ban me from self-medicating (which is actually not very hard to do for simple illnesses). I'm also barred from buying lab tests without first paying a doctor for permission.
Women are required to pay a doctor for permission to buy birth control.
I'm banned from visiting someone with less training than a doctor to receive treatment for simple ailments.
Of course, I'll be the first to admit that Baumol's cost disease plays an important role too, as well as higher costs for newer treatments.
The easy problems in medicine are vastly easier than programming. You don't need a doctor to solve them for you, all you need is his permission to implement the well known solution.
If you have an Iranian girlfriend, all you need is for her to smuggle you bootleg medicine when she visits her family. That's what I did.
I had a flu last year while in Thailand. I went to Bamrungrad hospital (google it, look at the pictures!) - total payed for visit to the doctor and medications, 1200 baht (35$). That IS cheap, no matter where from are you. People come there from other countries just because service is good and cheap.
Where in Europe would you get doctor and medicine for cheap like that if you didn't have social medical plan? Only a routine examination costs double that amount in most of european countries if you don't have medical insurance.
I still have my Dutch health and extended travel-insurance; besides that I have a work permit here and insurance of the company I work for. So that's like double safe.
But yeah, it is ridiculously cheap; just had a blood and regular check up last week for 300 baht (~$9, ~€6)
Will be curious to see his answer but health care standards are high (if you can pay) and, compared to Western rates, ridiculously affordable in Thailand.
