Pretty much any way you twist it, if in California I can get medical care for $8,000 (and that’s after my insurance pays a portion) or I can drive across the border into Tijuana and get the exact same quality medical services and only pay $2,600 out of pocket and have my care done by doctors who were trained and licensed in America and who run hospitals that are equivalent standard to American hospitals, then something must be going on.
Even if an MRI machine costs 5 million USD, if it’s going to work for 20 years you can amortize that cost out over that 20 years and definitely make more than 5 million dollars off of using it without charging every single head that passes through its magnetic rings $6,000 a pop.
If MRIs cost $1,000 in America do you know how many people would voluntarily go through an MRI just to get a quick check and make sure that there’s nothing hiding deep inside of their bodies waiting to lurch out and steal away their life?
You can amortize all the equipment you want. When you have 10x the equipment as anyone else per capita, your expenses are going to be higher. It’s not like amortization doesn’t exist in those countries lol
You make a great point though. Mexican docs get paid a lot less and they maintain a lot less equipment.
I work in healthcare and the author is not entirely wrong. We do drive up costs.
Look up MRIs per capita, for example. Tech is a huge driver of healthcare costs.
Pretty much any way you twist it, if in California I can get medical care for $8,000 (and that’s after my insurance pays a portion) or I can drive across the border into Tijuana and get the exact same quality medical services and only pay $2,600 out of pocket and have my care done by doctors who were trained and licensed in America and who run hospitals that are equivalent standard to American hospitals, then something must be going on.
Even if an MRI machine costs 5 million USD, if it’s going to work for 20 years you can amortize that cost out over that 20 years and definitely make more than 5 million dollars off of using it without charging every single head that passes through its magnetic rings $6,000 a pop.
If MRIs cost $1,000 in America do you know how many people would voluntarily go through an MRI just to get a quick check and make sure that there’s nothing hiding deep inside of their bodies waiting to lurch out and steal away their life?
You can amortize all the equipment you want. When you have 10x the equipment as anyone else per capita, your expenses are going to be higher. It’s not like amortization doesn’t exist in those countries lol
You make a great point though. Mexican docs get paid a lot less and they maintain a lot less equipment.