And So It Goes

The Globalized Cost of Living (and not Dying)

One of my co-workers is taking a couple of weeks off for surgery, specifically a tonsilectomy.

Not noteworthy in and of itself, but his insurance company here in Tokyo (and mine too, come to think) is paying for my co-worker to have the operation in New Zealand. In addition to the the operation itself and the hospital stay, they're paying for airfare to Auckland, hotel, and meals, and covering the cost for necessary recuperation before my co-worker will be well enough fly back to Tokyo.

This is not open-heart surgery or liver-transplant or some exotic only-in-New-Zealand therapy: he's having his tonsils out. And yet, the insurance company feels it can save money by sending him 5,500 miles from Tokyo for relatively minor surgery (It kind of reminds me of the probably apocryphal story of how during San Francisco's Gold Rush it was cheaper to have laundry sent by ship to China for washing than having it done locally).

Regardless of whether the insurance company is doing this because of the high cost of Japanese medical care or the relative weakness of the New Zealand dollar (NZ$2.05 = US$1, according to this morning's IHT), it makes me wonder if it's a sign of the globalization of something I didn't think was possible, namely medical care. I mean, sure you can shift the high cost of domestic manufacturing by importing goods made cheaply elsewhere (like plastic toys from China or running shoes from Vietnam), but doing so with services?

It occurs to me, upon reflection, that I've heard of similiar cases of low-cost offshore medical care competing with higher-priced domestic alternatives, though the examples I've heard of involved (more-or-less) elective care: San Diego residents crossing the border to get cheap dental care in Tijuana, low-priced sex-change operations in Bangkok (no joke: the plastic surgeons there are quite experienced and skilled in the procedures, I'm told), cosmetic surgery in South Africa (with the added bonus going on a wild animal safari while you recuperate). But a necessary medical procedure? Is this the wave of the future? Developing countries vying to be low-cost medical providers? Patients going halfway around the world just for medical care? Gosh, how will the physicians in the U.S. compete in such a cut-throat (pardon the expression) global business environment?

(Our HR director tells me that our health insurance provider has an arrangement with hospitals in Bangkok, which means if I get sick, I might get a nice tropical vacation out of the deal. Suddenly, this doesn't sound so bad.)

Links of the Day:

Forbes magazine looks at the "surgery and safari" phenomenon.
Oanda.com: a foreign currency conversion site I frequently use to see how far my yen goes in the States or the UK.