Here is an interesting link in this month’s Employee Benefit Adviser: http://eba.benefitnews.com/news/medical-tourism-prepped-for-take-off-but-still-grounded-2683657-1.html. The main reason why it’s interesting is because as far as I can tell, Medical Travel benefits offered by employers is very much taking off.
Just two weeks ago, HealthGlobe launched a self-funded “Association Plan” in collaboration with UMR, a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Health Care, and we have received a significant level of interest.
I think the main thing that is being missed in articles like this one is that the decision to make a Medical Travel benefit available is one that requires a significant level of thought around risk mitigation and other factors that individual payors do not need to consider as seriously.
This due diligence can easily take 18 months or more for a large organization to complete. What’s more, these companies are very reluctant to trumpet the availability of these benefits to the at-large public via the press because if the program fails they want to keep it quiet, and if it succeeds it will prove a significant competitive advantage until discovered and implemented by other competitors. In fact, several large employers have already launched these benefits to very little fanfare… intentionally.
I think hindsight will show that employer-based Medical Travel has been moving forward for a year or more already. Maybe it’s still just flying below the radar.
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