By Jessica Yarbrough, Marketing & Communications Manager, Satori World Medical

Year after year, U.S. employers continue to face double-digit rate increases on health insurance premiums.  Since 2000, the majority of employers have seen costs increase 100 percent or more in order to offer their employees a comprehensive medical plan.  Their increases are not linked to new coverage or benefits, just renewals.

What new strategy can be implemented to help reduce plan sponsor cost without increasing employees’ out-of- pocket expenses or restricting access to quality providers of their choice?

Medical tourism or medical travel, whereby U.S. patients travel outside the U.S. to receive quality medical care at a fraction of the cost, is a benefit strategy that employers are using to achieve lower claim costs on a medical plan, provide additional choice of providers, and engage and reward consumerism within the scope of their existing medical benefit plan.

The key word is choice.  Plan sponsors now offer their employees a choice of domestic network providers and networks provide plan sponsors with discounts of 20-40 percent off providers’ “retail” prices. The benefit plan provides incentives to use lower-cost participating network medical providers over often more expensive, non-participating medical providers.

Satori World Medical, a global health care company specializing in the medical travel space, offers an all-inclusive plan that waives all the out-of-pocket expenses for the employee when choosing a Satori Global Network™ hospital and physician.  Additionally, using a proprietary model, Satori World Medical helps clients design a shared savings feature whereby the employer would share a portion of the $30,000 to $75,000 savings for their surgical procedure through a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) contribution to the employee.  The HRA is tax-free to the employee and tax-deductible to the employer.  On average, the total cost savings of participating in Satori World Medical’s global health care network are as much as 40-80 percent per procedure, which is extremely compelling.  Additionally, medical travel programs, like Satori, can be offered as an additional benefit to any existing health plan design, and does not replace any domestic provider choice.

Of course employees are only going to travel abroad for medical care if the quality of care is comparable or better than in the U.S.  The global economy has grown, and as a result, competition to provide the best possible health care services, has also grown.  Just as high-quality products and technologies are produced across the globe, and organizations purchase various goods and services from international companies based on price and quality, so too are a number of high quality hospitals and physicians and medical services now available globally.

Companies like Satori World Medical, which specialize in medical tourism, are now making it easier for employers and payors to embrace global health care programs because they have already built the infrastructure, performed the due diligence, and provided contracts that can be supported by U.S. third -party payors.

With the cost of healthcare and health insurance premiums being higher than in any other nation in the world, it is the right time to embrace innovative, cost-saving alternatives like medical tourism. As the industry emerges, we see that the interest in global health care among American companies will continue to grow significantly.