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Medical tourism has hurt most Indians. 1583 USD is almost 100k INR. The average per capita income in India is 1219 USD (72k INR). This figure too is very mislea

by kapad 13y ago

Medical tourism has hurt most Indians. 1583 USD is almost 100k INR. The average per capita income in India is 1219 USD (72k INR). This figure too is very misleading, since poverty is a huge problem. A very simple plotting with data from wikipedia and rudimentary extrapolation, shows that more than 1.1 billion Indian's annual income is less than the current cost of heart surgery. India's total population is 1.2 billion. Medical tourism, though very fine for a lot of folks who want a cheaper alternative, is driving up the cost of medical treatments in India by leaps and bounds. This makes surgeries, that were already very expensive and out of the reach of most Indian's even more expensive and out of the reach of even more people. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India Simpel graph of the poverty data : http://imgur.com/JngiK8W http://imgur.com/JngiK8W (I used this to find the number of people with an annual income less than 1583 USD)

sheri 13y ago
> Medical tourism, though very fine for a lot of folks who want a cheaper alternative, is driving up the cost of medical treatments in India by leaps and bounds. Any evidence to back this up? Your links and statistics are about how this specific cost is still out of reach of a lot of people. I don't think anyone is debating that. > This makes surgeries, that were already very expensive and out of the reach of most Indian's even more expensive and out of the reach of even more people. The article shows how the cost of surgery has dropped over time, and their goal being to drop it further.
g8oz 13y ago
Ah, the medical version of the "fixed lump of labor" fallacy.
cabalamat 13y ago
> Medical tourism, though very fine for a lot of folks who want a cheaper alternative, is driving up the cost of medical treatments in India by leaps and bounds. In the short term, maybe. In the long term surely it will reduce costs or at least stabilise them. Millions of CPUs and RAM chips are sold every year, but the price of them doesn't keep going up, does it?

by kapad 13y ago

sheri 13y ago

> Medical tourism, though very fine for a lot of folks who want a cheaper alternative, is driving up the cost of medical treatments in India by leaps and bounds. Any evidence to back this up? Your links and statistics are about how this specific cost is still out of reach of a lot of people. I don't think anyone is debating that. > This makes surgeries, that were already very expensive and out of the reach of most Indian's even more expensive and out of the reach of even more people. The article shows how the cost of surgery has dropped over time, and their goal being to drop it further.

g8oz 13y ago

Ah, the medical version of the "fixed lump of labor" fallacy.

cabalamat 13y ago

> Medical tourism, though very fine for a lot of folks who want a cheaper alternative, is driving up the cost of medical treatments in India by leaps and bounds. In the short term, maybe. In the long term surely it will reduce costs or at least stabilise them. Millions of CPUs and RAM chips are sold every year, but the price of them doesn't keep going up, does it?