Those in pain get on a plane
SOARING private health insurance, high-priced surgeons and long queues in public hospitals are seeing Australians getting on a plane and heading abroad for operations.
This includes David Rowland, 78, of Wulagi, who went to Thailand for a double-knee replacement. Mr Rowland was told he’d wait 18 months for one knee in the public system, and a further three months for a second. He was quoted $30,000 for one knee and got both for $25,000 abroad.
SOARING private health insurance, high-priced surgeons and long queues in public hospitals are seeing Australians getting on a plane and heading abroad for operations.
Repeat warnings from the local medical fraternity that patients face risks in foreign hospitals have not convinced suffering Australians.
And anecdotally, the figure is climbing.
Though Thailand has long been a destination for cosmetic surgery, a Sunday Territorian investigation has revealed that people are accessing life savings or selling homes to travel there for new knees and hips, or for complex spinal surgeries in Germany.
Australian surgeons want the business and are prepared to drop prices when confronted with patients showing cheaper quotes from overseas, but they cannot compete.
Needing a double-knee replacement, David Rowland, 78, from Wulagi, was told he’d wait 18 months for one knee in the public system, and a further three months for a second.
He was quoted $30,000 for one knee by a private surgeon so decided to go to Bangkok Hospital in November, where he got two new titanium knees for $25,000.
“We’ve outpriced ourselves with medicine and care,” he said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it “does not keep records on Austra- lians travelling abroad for medical tourism”, but frustrated patients have revealed they are putting trust in the hands of foreign doctors.
DFAT notes on Smartraveller that Australians are increasingly travelling for orthopaedic, IVF and stem-cell therapy but warns no costs will be covered by Medicare and that “travel insurance is unlikely to meet the costs of planned medical treatment abroad”.
Dr David Martin, president of the Australian Orthopaedic Association, said doctors would prefer the money was “kept within the Australian economy” but conceded: “The constraints on health care and the waiting lists are longer than we’d like.”
With 55 per cent of Australians not holding private health insurance, so-called “elective” operations are forcing them to look beyond public wait lists.
But leading Melbourne surgeon Michael Johnson, president of the Australian Spine Society, said surgeons could gain from conducting such operations but the scientific literature did not support the procedure.
“Disc replacement is dangerous,” he said. “You are not seeing the ones who do badly. Ask yourself: why are we cautious when there’s a financial incentive?”
In 2018, Bangkok Hospital, now one of the world’s most respected hospitals, treated 2343 Australian patients.