Health care debate in the USA

One of the flash points in the Democratic party primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is the debate about health care in the United States.

Millions of Americans live without medical insurance, and many of them are not waiting for the government to act.

The following is a transcript from KXAN Austin News' Jim Swift, who has a special report on the experiences of two Austinites who ventured into the world of medical tourism.

Perhaps you are one of those living without medical insurance.

If not, imagine for a moment that you are, and that you face every day hoping nothing goes wrong.

Then it does. What would you do?

Much of what we hear about India is evidently true. There are lots of people, for one thing, leading to lots of traffic and lots of pollution. Monkeys are not limited to the jungle, and cows are not limited to the barn.

We get fresh evidence of all this from Austinite Steve Roach, who arranged a medical tourism trip to India with his friend Frank Murphy.

"You got a good deal here," Roach says."There's a typical tourist," Murphy says.
Last year, Roach, who has only the bare minimum of health insurance, discovered he needed triple-bypass heart surgery.

"Come on now, they were quoting me $48,000 to $85,000, just for the hospital here," Roach says. "That's not the doctor or the anesthesiologist, and you could get 11 days there, all costs, for $12,000. Quite a difference."

"If this alternative had not been available to you, what would you have done?" Swift asks."I would have had to have gotten it here," Roach says."And how would you have paid for that?" Swift asks."Bankruptcy, I imagine," Roach says. "I wouldn't have much choice."

"Based on your experience, watching Steve, is this something you would do if you needed to?" Swift asks.

"If I had to," Murphy says. "Thank God I'm on Medicare, and I don't have to worry about the expenses the way Steve did. But if I were in a similar situation, as far as needing it and not being able to afford it here, yeah, I'd do it."

"People, when they hear you went to Thailand for medical care or a dentist, they kind of have a cultural prejudice, I think," says Leighton Hodges. "People have this stereotype of Thailand of just substandard care, and it's just not the case."

Hodges, another medical tourist from Austin, so thoroughly ground his teeth that his dentist told him he needed major work.

"The dentist said with this dental gum surgery and everything it would be thirty-seven thousand, five hundred and something dollars," Hodges says. "And I took a deep breath, and I said, 'Thank you very much.'"

"This is Tom Cruise and see how he smiles? I think now your smile should be better than this," says a Thai dentist.

Hodges spent more than three months in Thailand and only spent $10,000.

"The lady really knew what she was doing," Hodges says. "So I got a lot of compliments, and people would say, 'You look younger,' or, 'You look better somehow.'"

"In my opinion, you get what you pay for and I really, as a dentist of 20 years, the dentistry I've seen from foreign countries, even with a dentist from America, it is just, it's not good," says Dr. Merrily Sandford.

"There's plaque; this is plaque underneath the crown; this tooth had decay," Sandford says.

As it turns out, the seals leaked on four of Hodge's mouthful of new crowns.

"but even with the four that I'm going to have to, that I'm in the process of replacing, I'm still saving a whole lot of money, and I had a wonderful vacation," Hodges says.

Hodges did his own research and set up his own contacts in Thailand.

Roach, on the other hand, arranged his trip to India through Healthbase, a company that connects patients to more than 200 medical, cosmetic and dental procedures in eight countries around the world.