Canadians starting to demand the privatized USA Health Care system.......

[MADem]

86. Canadians, Americans, and those of other nationalities all engage in medical tourism.

Brazil is into it in a big way for cosmetic surgery; India is into it for all sorts of stuff, from joint replacement to heart procedures.

What I am saying is there isn't a thing wrong with cross-border stuff. Even CANADA is starting to look for medical tourism revenue, which has potential to provide a substantial cash influx to nations that do it well (see: http://www.findprivateclinics.ca/resources/general/medical-tourism.php ) -- you can't blame any of these countries for trying to swipe customers from USA and elsewhere!

The more medical care available, the better. The more competition, the more motivated providers will be to maximize efficiencies and make the damn care affordable and reasonable in-country.

USA has taken on the VERY wealthy medical tourists down the years, the money-is-no-object crowd, but other countries have been getting into the act and appealing to "average people" for some time already:

Factors that have led to the increasing popularity of medical travel include the high cost of health care, long wait times for certain procedures, the ease and affordability of international travel, and improvements in both technology and standards of care in many countries.[7] The avoidance of waiting times is the leading factor for medical tourism from the UK, whereas in the US, the main reason is cheaper prices abroad. In 2009, there were 60,000 patients going for treatment abroad in the UK[8].

Many surgery procedures performed in medical tourism destinations cost a fraction of the price they do in the First World. For example a liver transplant that cost $300,000 USD in America cost about $91,000 USD in Taiwan.[9] A large draw to medical travel is convenience and speed. Countries that operate public health-care systems are often so taxed that it can take considerable time to get non-urgent medical care. Using Canada as an example, an estimated 782,936 Canadians spent time on medical waiting lists in 2005, waiting an average of 9.4 weeks.[10] Canada has set waiting-time benchmarks, e. g. 26 weeks for a hip replacement and 16 weeks for cataract surgery, for non-urgent medical procedures.[11]

Medical tourists come from a variety of locations including Europe, the Middle East, Japan, the United States, and Canada. Factors that drive demand for medical services abroad in First World countries include: large populations, comparatively high wealth, the high expense of health care or lack of health care options locally, and increasingly high expectations of their populations with respect to health care.

In First World countries like the United States medical tourism has large growth prospects and potentially destabilizing implications. A forecast by Deloitte Consulting published in August 2008 projected that medical tourism originating in the US could jump by a factor of ten over the next decade. An estimated 750,000 Americans went abroad for health care in 2007, and the report estimated that a million and a half would seek health care outside the US in 2008. The growth in medical tourism has the potential to cost US health care providers billions of dollars in lost revenue.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism

Competition drives markets and creates incentives for providers to lower their prices. I do think that more people having access to health care in USA is a good thing, because it will force these institutions that are care providers to work harder at providing quality care at a fair price.