Medical Tourism Association Releases Healthcare Reform White Paper

West Palm Beach, FL, August 04, 2010 --(PR.com)-- The Medical Tourism Association has released an educational White Paper on Healthcare Reform, detailing what positive and negative effects healthcare reform is expected to have on both inbound, outbound and domestic medical tourism. Healthcare Reform passed into law in March 2010 and has both immediate implications and those to go into full effect in 2014. Many expect the reform will continue to raise healthcare and health insurance costs in the United States. As healthcare costs and health insurance costs rise in the United States this will push American patients to choose to travel domestically for medical tourism, a new term coined towards the provision of more affordable healthcare services within the US, or to leave the United States to travel abroad for medical care.

As stated by Devon Herrick of National Center for Policy Analysis, USA, “The recent Health Reform legislation contains virtually nothing to encourage patients and providers to control costs. By contrast, medical tourism represents global competition in health care, where providers compete on price and quality. Medical tourism is our best opportunity to encourage competition within the health care industry.”

The Healthcare Reform white paper is meant to give guidance and understanding on how the different aspects of healthcare reform will interact with medical tourism. The Medical Tourism White Paper can be read in the Healthcare Reform Updates section of the Medical Tourism Congress website. http://medicaltourismcongress.com/en/healthcare-reform-updates.html

“We have released this white paper in order to provide insight into healthcare reform and its different provisions, projecting how it may affect medical tourism. Many people around the world do not understand the lengthy healthcare reform document passed in the US and mistakenly think that it provides more affordable healthcare to Americans and that it will lower healthcare costs. Costs will likely go up under healthcare reform and this was reaffirmed in the recent medical tourism survey the MTA conducted with almost 100 insurance companies and employers, where almost 100% of respondents found that they believe costs will rise,” said Jonathan Edelheit, CEO of the Medical Tourism Association.

The healthcare reform and medical tourism white paper will be available at the MTA’s annual conference, The World Medical Tourism & Global Healthcare Congress, which will have a large focus on Healthcare Reform this year in Los Angeles, California from September 22-24th. The conference will focus on how healthcare reform affects employers, insurers, insurance agents, healthcare providers and patients and will peel back the onion of the thousands of pages of healthcare reform bill to look at how different aspects of health care reform will really work. www.medicaltourismcongress.com

The Medical Tourism Association also conducted a survey of over one hundred US insurance companies and US employers on the effect medical tourism will have upon them. The survey, “Healthcare Reform Survey Among Industry Stakeholders Discovers Similar Concerns,” July, 2010, shows a sample of the future growth potential of the medical tourism industry. 71 percent of insurance companies and employers felt healthcare reform was extremely positive for the medical tourism industry and more Americans would travel overseas under the new law. Employers and insurance companies know that healthcare reform will increase costs and medical tourism is one of the few ways to lower those costs. http://medicaltourismmag.com/article/healthcare-reform-survey.html

The Medical Tourism Association (Medical Travel Association), also known as the Global Healthcare Association, at http://www.MedicalTourismAssociation.com is the first international non-profit association comprised of the top international hospitals, healthcare providers, medical travel facilitators, insurance companies, and other affiliated companies and members with the common goal of promoting the highest level of quality of healthcare to patients in a global environment. Our Association promotes the interests of its healthcare provider and medical tourism facilitators members. The Medical Tourism Association has three mission-driven tenets: Education, Communication and Transparency.

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