We also post a lot of the rates publicly in a consumer-friendly searchable format, but we don't charge any money for that. But this data will let us greatly expand the scope of that free service.
I hope they have a good business plan and manage to stick around!
Obligatory "if anyone is interested in joining a fast growing, series A company doing impactful work, hit up our careers page!"
I want my medical providers to be local to me so they’re liable to my local community. I also want to keep my organs and have insurance cover the costs.
In other words, it's a hard sell to convince a factory worker to travel 5-10 hours on a plane to a place they have no familiarity with to get what they believe to be inferior treatment. They might not even have a passport.
This is much less of an issue in Europe where countries are tiny and almost everyone travels between them on a regular basis.
Also, medical tourism is mostly limited to what the industry calls Shoppable Services - outpatient treatments that are not emergent/not life threatening. There is a bit of a cottage industry in Mexico for some services, like bariatric surgery for obesity or dental work, but it isn't a huge volume. The really expensive stuff in the US is emergency treatment which you can't shop for anyway.
All that said, I think the interest in buying prescriptions from overseas has never been higher.
I do remember reading a story a couple years back where an insurance company paid for their customer to fly to Mexico, flew down a US orthopedic surgeon, and paid him pretty well for his services. The cost of the flights, surgeon, and medical facility in Mexico were significantly less than it would cost them in the US, so everybody won except the US hospital. As I recall, the hospital in Mexico was collocated with a resort, so it was a nice place to recuperate as well.
Not sure how common that really is, though, stories like that make the news for a reason.
Edit: Pretty sure this is the story I was thinking about: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/08/13/cancun
> Are you a transparent provider or payer? > There is a market for transparency. Let patients find you by claiming > your provider page and listing your services. It only takes 10 minutes.
But following through that link says it is a free program.
Part of that is assuming that prices will be public, so we encourage them to claim their own page and take control of the rates listed there.