Travel Insurance for Medical Tourists
Medical tourism often sounds too good to be true on paper. Even in Australia, with an excellent public health care system, the cost of elective or cosmetic surgery can be enormous. Comparing the cost of a breast augmentation, hip replacement or experimental stem cell treatment in Australia versus Thailand looks extremely tempting. Today we are looking at why you need to develop a much fuller picture of costs, risks, insurance and the legalities of medical tourism, with a focus on travel insurance.
Travel insurance won’t cover procedures – or consequence
Most people realize that it isn’t possible to simply take out a hundred-dollar travel insurance policy, and then arrange to have surgery for something overseas. Even if the surgery is for something life-threatening or essential, travel insurance will cover emergencies only. However, most people don’t realise that if there are complications arising from surgery, your travel insurance will usually still not cover necessary work. For example, there could be a reaction to a type of medication, that was administered during the surgery or the procedure could have been carried out by an incompetent surgeon, which can lead to further complications for the patient.
Build a full picture of the costs
The simple face value of a procedure in your home country as opposed to a medical tourism country can be huge. Many people forget to factor in costs like:
- Flights
- Accommodation
- Required medications after surgery
- Vendor fees
- Visa and other travel costs
- Travel insurance, which may cover you for other claims not related to the surgery
- There may be additional time off work necessary for undergoing pre-op checkups by the operating doctors overseas
The cost implications go beyond the extra bits and pieces, however. If something goes wrong with an elective procedure in Australia, you would be automatically admitted to a public hospital and given whatever treatment was necessary to help you get well. Overseas, you would usually need to pay for any emergency treatment out of your own pocket … travel insurance can’t cover it. If you are returned home for treatment, you will probably have to pay for it also.
Additional risks
Healthcare in Westernized countries is expensive, due in large part to the high malpractice insurance fees that doctors must pay. If you have an adverse event when being treated overseas, your doctor most likely does not have malpractice insurance, and you could be left footing the bill for their mistakes … for quite a long time.
Being treated overseas also means exposure to various foreign diseases that aren’t common in Australia. Your recovery period is not an ideal time to contract a disease like dengue fever, for which there is no vaccination and no cure – patients simply need to ride it out for up to 3 weeks.
