Heart Surgery in India for ,583 Costs 06,385 in U.S | Hacker News Reader

Heart Surgery in India for ,583 Costs 06,385 in U.S

bloomberg.com

19 pointstacon16 comments

The title is currently "Heart Surgery in India for ,583 Costs 06,385 in U.S" but should be "Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S."

...So it's the instances of "$1" that got removed. Overzealous input sanitization?

Got hit by a car a few day ago in Nepal.

2 consultations + Chest x-ray + medicine in 30 minutes for less than $15 USD.

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." - Mahatma Ghandi

That's a paltry sum by Western standards even in Romania - one of the poorest countries in Europe though you might just get away with it. I wonder how many consultations, x-rays and medicine must be provided per day to generate a reasonable wage for medical staff in India? Or was this one-off for an emergency?

Why is `$1` missing from title? Does HN parse it as an environment variable?

Looking that way!

Nope, just tried the title "$0,120 to $1,200", it worked perfectly fine.

Probably OP used some plugin to post this which is faulty.

Looking back at the user's submissions they posted a link with the title "The" 47 days ago, so this seems likely.

Or maybe it's a bot. Somebody should try to make it post a story with $$ in the title and see if it escapes it to the PID... :-)

Surely a more useful comparison would be UK / US where cost of living is much much easier to factor out

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3461585.stm we see 2008 tarring for heart bypass was 10,000 or about 16k USD

This compares sensibly with the cost of living adjustments between UK and India so we can be happy the UK / Indian health services are doing well

As for the US - well, why is your operation 8x the cost in the UK?

> “There has been fast urbanization in India that’s brought with it a change in dietary patterns and lifestyle,” ... “It’s leading to this huge jump in cardiovascular disease.”

I'm guessing that urbanization means less exercise and more stress. But I'm curious as to how the diet has changed in India lately? More meat, more refined sugar, and more unhealthy cooking oils?

More time eating junk food outside and less time cookin at home. Many of the big software firms have the cafeterias open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and many people leave quite early to catch the company bus.

And it's not necessarily the healthiest food either.

Along with that, more people are eating food that their body is not adapted to. Indians don't work out enough to compensate the high calorie intake from McDonalds, KFC, TacoBell, etc which leads to these heart problems.

I don't think that's a problem isolated to just India!

The reason might be that people used to die earlier of other now curable things.

Been saying this for a long time. Health insurance in US is a fraud. Obama just made it compulsory for everyone in US to be defrauded.

Here's why: Assuming that the actual cost of heart surgery in US is 10x India cost, it'll cost ~$10k to $15k in US for a heart surgery.

Now, a good health insurance premium, for a family of 4, easily costs upwards of $1k a month. People pay so much, because this fraud in US, shows the $100k figure, and those with good health insurance will be glad to see that they just have to pay their deductible (of $500 to $5k,based on their insurance).

Basically, Americans think it costs 100x for a treatment/medicine, and pay 1x towards monthly premiums, while the actual cost if just 10x. In India, the cost probably is just 1x.

Doctors/Hospitals in US lose because they have no pricing power. (Insurance company decides how much docs/hospital/group gets paid)

Patients in US lose because the Insurance companies dictate who is covered for what.

Insurance companies in US rejoice.

note: I'm not an American, so this is purely a dispassionate comment on what a ripoff healthcare insurance in US is, and how it affects the list price for medical care and medicines.

I wonder just how much costs are inflated for medical goods because of unnecessary restrictions or standards?

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