Friday, May 29, 2009

Article on Industry reaction to Medical Tourism by Candace Gwaltney

Author mentions that inurance company WellPoint announced a pilot program for Medical Tourism which prompted the Indiana Legislature (Bill 1084) to take a protectionism stance by Rep. Craig R. Fry and echoed by Dr. Richard Feldman.  The points made by Feldman around his concern are valid in that forcing frail patients to travel abroad is not desirable, however, he did not have objection to patients going abroad on a purly elective basis. This is actually the case in the Wellpoint program as described in the article. The insurer mentioned that is providing medical tourism as an option to a select company is Aetna. BCBS SC's new initiative is also mentioned.

The author also cites a facilitator stating that they are seeing more cases for carida, spinal, orthopedic and dental procedures.

http://www.bizvoicemagazine.com/media/archives/09mayjun/MedicalTourism.pdf

The actual Bill 1084 mentioned in the article can be found here:
http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2009/HB/HB1084.1.html

No comments:

Post a Comment