Medical Tourism??

Is this a solution to the skyrocketing health care costs in the US?

AFL-CIO's blog reports:

Everyone—employees and employers—admit health care costs are skyrocketing and that something must be done. But shipping an employee overseas for medical care?

That’s what the manufacturing company Blue Ridge Paper in Canton, N.C., aimed to do when it m ade plans to send Carl Garrett, a paper mill technician, to India for gall bladder and shoulder surgery.

That is, until Garrett’s union, the United Steelworkers (USW), heard about it. Says Stan Johnson, an assistant USW district director, who led negotiations with Blue Ridge:

I about fell off my chair when I heard this. I was appalled. The whole thing is insane. People are not looking at the slippery slope this could lead to. We’ve watched our jobs go offshore. Now we’re exporting patients. This is a flash point for the real issue—the need for universal health care.

After persistent objections by the union, management agreed to back off the plan. Both sides agreed to work together to find an alternative within the United States for Garrett, who had volunteered to undergo surgery in India in return for a 25 percent share of the savings.

Dubbed “medical tourism” by the media, the idea of outsourcing medical care to lower-cost countries is finding its way into corporate agendas as a way to cut health care costs.

In California, we have a better solution. It only needs the Governer's Signature... SB840.