Let me fill in the gaps for you. First off, this article is comparing the cheapest clinic in India, with the most expensive and most revered Heart center (Clev

Let me fill in the gaps for you. First off, this article is comparing the cheapest clinic in India, with the most expensive and most revered Heart center (Cleveland Clinic) in the world. NH is basically like getting your heart surgery done at a non air conditioned WalMart. There are no patient rooms. There is a patient room. A giant room with beds lined up civil war style. The food is akin to gruel, ETC... Of course there is going to be a significant cost difference. This is like comparing staying at a Hostile and getting dinner in the soup line with Staying a night at the Hilton and ordering a New York steak dinner for room service, of course there is going to be a significant cost difference. Leave it to a reporter to compare the cheapest abroad to the most expensive here (a bit of stretching to make the store line a bit more catchy). Second, the reported cost is false. "NH maintains its costs low, savings that are then transferred to the patient. NH's cost of open heart surgery is USD $2,000. The hospital charges $2,400 to the patient, compared to $5,500 charged at an average private hospital in India." http://healthmarketinnovations.org/program/narayana-hrudayalaya-hospital-nh http://healthmarketinnovations.org/program/narayana-hrudayal... Third, the per capita income in India is $1,000 nominal dollars, in the U.S., it's $50,000. So the average adjusted open heart surgery in India is actually $275,000 when converting to USD and comparing using the average per capita income. (Narayana Hrudayalaya's "discounted hospitals" only charge $120,000) I know that the average income does not fairly reflect the true cost differential because India has a disproportionately large population of people living in abject poverty. It does make the cost difference margin quite a bit less though. If you are wondering just how places in countries like this can operate more cheaply though? I will tell you. US laws. In America the law states that hospitals have to care for anyone even non citizens. It also puts stringent regulations on hospitals. Regulations that do not exist in India. These Regulations are very expensive to comply with. Narayana Hrudayalaya's establishments are not hospitals, they are not for emergency care. They do not treat non-paying clientele. In America, our medical costs balloon out of control for many reasons, one of the larger ones being the care of non-paying patients. Emergency rooms and therefore hospitals cannot turn away patients for any reason. They must admit illegals and uninsured (even for long term care). They cannot recoup money from these individuals so the paying customers get to flip the bill so the hospital can remain in business. Just try going to an emergency room in India as an illegal alien. You will be promptly jailed and deported. Try going without insurance or means of payment... Good luck with that (same MO as all these countries where these "cheap procedures" can be had) There are some countries where these procedures are still cheaper than in the US and they cannot legally turn away illegals and uninsured. They have a slightly different formula. The government flips the bill (subsidizes the hospitals) thus allowing them to compete cheaply (which keeps the costs low).