Could medical tourism trend parallel fate of Detroit car industry?

What great insight. I always felt we did not fully understand what Globalization was altimately about. In the first step was a direct hit on the manufacturing jobs that ran in the $40-$100 per hour range. Then came outsourcing of knowledge based industries such as IT which then spread to Accouting and etc. What you identified is that Globalization will force the US to adjust ALL levels of compensation and not just a few.

When you look at the Health Care Problems it will all come down to cost of employment or services.

It looks like everyone will have to adjust to reflect a global pay scale.

While the cost of services by physicians is not significantly higher here than in India or Thailand,they have an edge because the hospital charges are very low. They also do what is necessary because they don't have legal hassles, administrators, and high school "graduates" telling them how to practice medicine. Over there..nurses practice nursing and Doctors practice Medicine .. roles are well defined., they don;t have to put up with anointed quacks

I agree with Ms. Ellis' observation.

I must also add that we, in America, are still living with the false belief that we are the best at everything. We ignore our failures, and look for negative reasons (for example, there is not enough oversight to assure a good medical outcome) for why the success of others should not exist. We ignore the fact that success is directly proportionate to demand, and demand is intricately linked to outcome.

Patrotism is one thing, but blind stupidity is another.Organized labor have focused more on high wages while sacrificing quality, and then we use patriotism to support the mistake. In the mean time, other countries are focusing on quality, outcome performance, and economic functionality.

When seniors found out that they could go to Canada and purchase medications, that are identical to US medications, for a much cheaper price, our government claimed that the drugs could be inferior due to the lack of oversight, and shut down the process. Now we are complaining about the cost of health care. There are no real plans to effectively bring down cost without sacrificing quality.
Tourism medicine, in India for example, is designed around quality outcome first, and price second.
The facts are; there would be no medical tourism without medical tourists. Americans complain about cheap labor when eployment rates and GDP go up, and economies expand in foreign countries while we have expensive labor, high unemployment, and a contracting economy. What is wrong with this picture?

Instead of thinking US car industry, be accountable and think "sustainable competitive strategy" nad "input over destiny".

That really is an interesting article. Thank you very much. Medical tourism can indeed be a very important topic.