As Health Costs Soar, More Find Care Overseas

"They were quoting me $30,000, tentatively, paid out of pocket," says Dodds, 42, a Portland, Ore.-based horse trainer. "There was no way I could afford it here."

But 7,200 miles away in India was an affordable solution. Through IndUSHealth, a company in Raleigh, N.C., that arranges medical care in India for U.S. citizens, Dodds flew out to the Apollo hospital in Delhi, where she had a successful hysterectomy that allowed her to return to her horseback riding students just two-and-a-half weeks later.

The total cost: just under $10,000, including round-trip airfare, transportation to and from the hospital, a one-week hospital stay where she says she was treated with more care and attention than she had ever experienced in the U.S., capped by 10 days at a "gorgeous hotel."

"It was actually a pleasant situation, considering that I was having major surgery," she says. "That, and I don't like Indian food, which was kind of hard for me."

As medical costs soar in the U.S., the number of uninsured has swelled, exceeding 46 million, or nearly 16% of Americans last year, according to Census Bureau statistics. As a result, more and more folks are choosing what's known as medical tourism and heading overseas for surgeries and dental treatments they couldn't otherwise afford.

In 2006 alone, an estimated 150,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical care, a number expected to double by next year, according to Josef Woodman, author of "Patients Beyond Borders: Everybody's Guide to Affordable, World-Class Medical Tourism." Nearly half of those — around 70,000 — had medically necessary surgeries like hip replacements or spinal work, heart surgeries like bypass or valve replacements, and even cancer treatments.

And while plastic surgery and dental procedures aren't to be ignored either (an estimated 40,000 Americans journeyed to Mexico last year to get dental treatment, Woodman says) medically necessary surgeries are the procedures saving patients the most money. Depending on the type of procedure and which country you go to, you could expect to save between 15% and 85%, Woodman says. A hip replacement, for example — one of the most common surgeries sought abroad — would typically cost $60,000 to $70,000 in the U.S. but just $15,000 in India, all costs included.

It's savings that even state officials and insurance companies are noticing. This year, bills have been introduced in two states, Colorado and West Virginia, that would require the insurance companies for state employees to cover medical procedures in overseas hospitals, including travel expenses and hotel stays for the patient and a travel companion. (It's not exactly a vacation, but a hotel stay, for recuperation, is almost always necessary.)

What's more, these bills mandate that the insurers give patients an incentive for choosing the less expensive overseas treatment by passing along 20% of the costs savings to the patient. The remaining 80% savings is to be deposited in an account used to reduce health premiums for all covered employees, says Ray Canterbury, one of 10 sponsors of the bill in the West Virginia House of Delegates. "The reason we introduced this bill is rising health-care costs," he says. "It's an effort to put pressure on domestic health-care companies, to put more pressure on prices."

Overseas the number of hospitals seeking accreditation from the Joint Commission International — which basically declares a hospital has standards very similar to those in the U.S — has increased tremendously since the JCI was founded in 1999. Currently, 120 hospitals have JCI accreditation, with the majority having taken place in the last three or four years, according to Dr. David Jaimovich, JCI's chief medical officer.