They should Be shot

[Obadiah]

I think if I had done something early on I could have saved my gallbladder, but not being one to go to doctors unless it's a last resort, well, I ignored the problem for too long and it was really bad. I'd foolishly been ignoring worsening symptoms for a few years hoping it would just go away. I finally accepted my fate when I was driving on a dark deserted highway in the wilderness of northern Canada one stormy night and had such a bad attack that I had to stop in the road, bail out of my truck, and was on my hands and knees, vomiting in the middle of the road with rain pouring down on me, literally hoping someone would run me over and put me out of my misery. The original doctor in Mexico examined me with the idea of saving it, but said from my symptoms I had just waited too long. After the surgery, the surgeon who removed it said that it was one of the worst cases he had ever seen. And remember, gallbladders are his specialty so he's seen a lot of them.

Oh, by the way, I ended up in the hospital that night in Canada. they would have done the surgery but, not being a Canadian citizen, they wanted me to pay in cash, which I didn't have with me. Their price was only $3000, and the price I ended up paying in Mexico was $2500. Both of those prices were less than my co-pay would have been if I'd had it done here in the good ol' USA.

 

[Obadiah]

im skeptical because of what I have seen in Afghanistan. the dirty needles used for medicines that caused wound care. I also have vet medicine that is cheap. sure people are greedy but the same type of surgeries are done on dogs and both my wife and dog take the same type of pain pill. tramadol 50mg.

Jason, my experience with foreign doctors has only been in Mexico and Canada. I think at least some of what you are talking about goes on in Mexico too. They have two levels of medical service, which actually have names but i can't remember them now. One level, for the common people, is very dangerous and I even personally know a woman that died on the operating table from an anesthesiologist who was nothing more than a 1st year student that was allowed to "practice" by working unsupervised on real patients in real surgeries!

The other type of service is for people who are considered "rich" and it costs more money but you get actual professional people who know what they are doing and have good reputations. They even have certain hospitals that specialize in this, and the service really is great. The problem is this isn't widely known outside of Mexico, and even for those who do know of this, unless you have contacts within the Mexican medical community (which I did have), it can be hard to know which level of service you are getting. (Well, hard to know before it's too late anyway. 2)

 

[jasonc]

Jason, my experience with foreign doctors has only been in Mexico. I think at least some of what you are talking about goes on there too. They have two levels of medical service, which actually have names but i can't remember them now. One level, for the common people, is very dangerous and I even personally know a woman that died on the operating table from an anesthesiologist who was nothing more than a 1st year student that was allowed to "practice" by working unsupervised on real patients in real surgeries!

The other type of service is for people who are considered "rich" and it costs more money but you get actual professional people who know what they are doing and have good reputations. They even have certain hospitals that specialize in this, and the service really is great. The problem is this isn't widely known outside of Mexico, and even for those who do know of this, unless you have contacts within the Mexican medical community (which I did have), it can be hard to know which level of service you are getting.

the same is the case with any third world nation. the only reason you paid so little is that the peso is so low in comparison. if you were a Mexican national on the average wage you couldn't afford it. I could say the same here with the medical community which some doctors, whether chiropractors, md or dentist refuse to take insurance and take cash. they don't have medical mal practice insurance and often warn you before hand. one of them is on the mainland and takes all in. the reason for him is that he hurt others and was sued often and cant be insured. the others may have medical insurance and cater to the elite.

 

[Obadiah]

the same is the case with any third world nation. the only reason you paid so little is that the peso is so low in comparison. if you were a Mexican national on the average wage you couldn't afford it...

That's part of it, yes. But remember I'm converting the prices to US dollars based on the exchange rate at the time in all my posts here. It's partially true that their cost of living is lower there, so that has some influence but not so much in the way a lot of people think. It's not a dramatic enough difference to justify anywhere near the difference in prices compared to the US.

In reality, at the time I had my gallbladder surgery in Ensenada I was studying the cost of things because I was considering retiring early and living cheaply in Mexico full time since I'd always heard about Americans doing that. But after a lot of first hand research, I found out that if I were to buy all the everyday things I use in life in the same quality that I get in the US, the real cost of living in Mexico was considerably higher than in the US! (Yeah, I spent a lot of time there and had pages and pages of spreadsheets comparing prices of most of the common things Americans buy or own on a regular basis. I guess I'm a bit of a nerd that way.) It's true that it's cheaper if you only look at the cost of buying things like tortillas and beans, but check out the price of buying a new car and you'll find it's much higher than buying the same car here in the USA (like almost 100% higher!) even if it's not an American made car (and buying stuff like a car outside of Mexico and importing it is even more expensive unless you want to smuggle it in), a proper quality home air conditioning unit, or even paying your cell phone bill (although I've heard it's lower now, at that time average local cell phone calls cost the equivalent of about 5 American dollars per minute, about 10 times the cost in the States at that time!) Even building materials for building a house were higher priced than the equivalent here in the US.

The only way the average person living in Mexico (at least at that time, I haven't checked current costs in years) was keeping his cost of living lower was by doing without. For example, in a real life example, if your building a road and have a tractor, bulldozer, etc, instead of using that machinery you just shovel the dirt by hand because you can't afford the fuel to run the machinery. If you need cement to build a driveway you don't have a cement truck deliver it and pour it for you. You buy raw cement and mix it with sand and gravel that you dig up yourself from a beach or river bed somewhere and you mix the cement by hand on the ground with a shovel and shovel it into the forms for your driveway by hand. (My father-in-law is a Mexican contractor and I've worked with him just for the experience, so I know this is how it's done for the average common person!) The truth was that by doing without the same things right here in the US, I could lower my cost of living here in the US to a level actually lower than I could in Mexico!

Because of things like that, I'm not so sure the relative high cost of medical care here in the US is really influenced very much at all by the relative cost of living or average wages in Mexico. I really do think we are being ripped off. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Obadiah]

You know what? I just realized how far off topic we are (my fault too!). If you guys want I can figure out how to split this off into a new thread and we can continue. Sorry about that Lewis!

 

[jasonc]

im not saying that we weren't, only that while its possible to get good care but as you said , if you know where to go. some would go and think that all Mexican docs are of the same caliber. clearly not.

 

[His_nee (Jeff)]

I'm not sure what you're skeptical of then. can you be more specific ? thank you.