Seeking medical treatment in a foreign country used to be the venue of the rich who were seeking new or experimental medical treatments. That practice is still popular but now it has a new twist. Seeking medical procedures in a foreign land could save literally thousands of dollars or Euro’s, making out of pocket purchase of medical procedures cheaper than the insurance that may or may not underwrite the procedures. No longer is medical tourism about expensive cosmetic surgery that can’t be gotten at home. It is about cheap medical procedures, some of which are sought after in various host countries with the express aim of saving money.
Others seek medical procedures that are not allowed in their home country, and therein comes the ease of charging high prices. However, most countries don’t exploit that end of the medical tourism business, as the cost of normal delivery of medical services more than adequately compensates the doctors and facilities, for doing the work. Some of the procedures, like treatment retinitis pigmentosa, are either outlawed or not recommended and therefore not paid for by normal insurance company billing guidelines.
In fact, since diseases like retinitis pigmentosa are said to be incurable, some countries forbid the procedure on those grounds alone. Not fair to the populace in general and certainly not fair to those that are afflicted with this particular vision robbing disease.
Retinitis pigmentosa, left untreated, will continue to progress, although slowly. Complete blindness is quite uncommon and the disease can be slowed but not stopped or cured. Because of this limited appearance of a cure, seeking out-of-country medical procedures has become a common way to get more options than available to patients of this disease.
Seeking a medical procedure like treatment retinitis pigmentosa, in another country is easier than you would imagine. It does however require you to be even more cautious than you normally would in the selection of your health care provider.