ZEROCARE

As the TTP Weekly Report was being delivered to your inbox last Friday afternoon (12/05), thanks to our fine TTP staff, I was undergoing abdominal surgery at Akta Medika, a small private hospital in Sevlievo, Bulgaria.  I'm writing this from a hospital bed there right now.

Abdominal surgery is a serious matter, especially when it's done to repair the errors of a previous surgery ten years ago.  So I didn't come here just because it's 1/20^th of the cost in the US.  I came because it's better.

I was born with a congenital condition resulting in an abdominal or "ventral" hernia which by 1998 doctors said had to be repaired.  Three years later the repair failed.  I went to numerous doctors in the years since, none of whom could explain what really happened or how this could be fixed for real.

Then two months ago during the TTP Business Expedition to Bulgaria (Good News From Bulgaria), I met Dr. Todor Hinov, founder and owner of Akta Medika.  His laproscopic surgeon examined me carefully, explained my situation and how it could be fixed as no one had before.  Laproscopic repair of such hernias was one of his specialties.

So here I am, everything went well, I'm recuperating rapidly and will shortly be as good as new – for a small fraction of the cost of what US doctors couldn't do.  (Check out the Akta Medika price list to see what I mean.  1.5 levs=1$.  Yes, this entire procedure including private hospital room, medication, post-op care, etc., is costing me less than a grand.)

That's not a putdown of American physicians – but it sure is of American medicine, so completely hamstrung by government rules and regulations, the nonsense of "third-party providers," and protections of medical monopolies like the AMA:  the antithesis of free market medicine.  Yet if you think it's bad now, wait until you see what Zerocare does to it.

This is not the place to discuss the specifics of how the government makes medical care in the US ridiculously expensive, complicated, and obsolete.  It is, rather, to discuss the opportunities for you to avoid – and even profit from – the mess that Zero will make so much worse with his and Teddy Chappaquiddick Kennedy's "Universal Health Care" health fascism.

And to explain the "flanking movement" Republicans can make to provide an alternative to Zerocare health fascism, saving Medicare hundreds of billions of dollars in so doing.

You may think that my winging off to Bulgaria for serious surgery is off the wall, but I'm not alone.  Time Magazine reported last month that 150,000 Americans flew abroad for medical treatment in 2006, 750,000 last year, and six million will be doing so in 2010. 

Estimates range from $5 billion to $10 billion that Americans will spend this year (2008) on what's being called "medical tourism."  Soon it's going to $50 billion and beyond.

Which tells you that in addition to your considering being one of these folks for any expensive health problem, there is a lot of money to be made here.  Real fortunes are being made in medical tourism, bigger fortunes will be made in the future – and made outside of the US.  This is the combo required for prospering in the coming collapse of the US economy.

[An aside, wouldn't a good name for the impending Great Depression II be The O-pression?]

Dr. Hinov (he's president of the Association of Bulgarian Physicians), for example, is planning a major expansion of Akta Medica.  Believe it or not, given the price list plus the high quality of its services (e.g., it's one of the best places in Europe for a hip replacement which costs a total of $2500), it's amazingly profitable.  "Tosho," as Dr. Hinov's friends call him, is as good a businessman as physician.

[For information on the Akta Medika expansion, contact my friend of over 25 years, Alex Alexiev, at [email protected], or 805-237-8063].

In addition to the Akta Medika expansion, we'll be discussing other global examples of how to profit from the explosion of medical tourism (such as private hospitals in Monterey, Mexico) at the TTP Carefree Rendezvous (Jan. 23-25).

Now let's talk about what the Republicans – or rather those few among them we call RWBs, Republicans With Balls – can do about Zerocare.

The list of needed fixes to the American health care system is very long, and the place for even the top ten is a future article.  (Okay, just one:  eliminate the effectivity requirement for FDA approval of drugs and medical devices.  This would drop the cost of drug approval by a factor of 20.  Proving a drug safe is not what costs over $1 billion and takes ten years to approve one drug; proving it effective according to the FDA regs is.  Yet it's a doctor's job, not the government's, to determine if it will work for you.)

So we'll focus instead on one single move the RWBs can make that can quickly gain the support of millions of Americans while at the same time doesn't directly oppose Zerocare.  Rather than a frontal assault of opposition, which would fail, it is a flanking move to marginalize Zerocare by offering an alternative to it.

It is:  allow Medicare and/or Zerocare to pay for medical tourism.  Medicare patients are older Americans who require the super-expensive operations (such as orthopedic or cardia procedures).  Give these patients the option of going to one of the 120+ hospitals abroad (the number is rapidly growing) accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI – the international branch of the organization that accredits American hospitals participating in Medicare).

With Zerocare, it's the US government dictating to you what US medical care you'll get and when.  You should at least have a choice, an option, to opt-out of the US system, and get world-class medical care elsewhere for a fraction of the cost – saving the government lots of money.

The Dems will try to demagogue it, but it's hard to argue against.  Already, companies like Hannaford Bros. in Portland, Maine have learned that it's much cheaper to fly their employees – plus their spouse or companion – to Singapore for major surgery.  Hannaford saves mucho thousands of dollars, even including airfare, hotel, and recuperation/vacation time in Singapore.

Allowing Medicare to pay for medical tourism not only can help prevent the bankruptcy of Medicare by saving torrents of billions, it also will force a debate on just why the US healthcare system is so ridiculously costly and obsolete. 

Shouldn't we all be asking just why is world-class medical care available in places like India, Thailand, the Philippines, Brazil, Costa Rica, Hungary, Bulgaria and so many other countries at a fraction of the cost of what it is in the US?

Such a debate will even drag health (we-don't-make-money-by-paying-claims) insurance companies – currently balking regarding medical tourism – into reforming their Byzantine rules and restrictions.  Their huge deductibles, 80/20 ripoffs, and other pondscum maneuvers are such as waste of time when this entire procedure of mine at Akta Medika is far less than the deductible alone.

I can hardly wait to get back to DC, and sit down with some RWBs on how to marginalize Zerocare by providing medical tourism options to it.  It won't be long from now.  One week to the day after my surgery, I'll be sleeping in my own bed.