Researchers: Try Importing Healthy Knees

U.S. health insurers that really want to save money should consider encouraging policyholders to seek medical care in other countries.

Aaditya Mattoo and Randeep Rathindran make that argument in an article published in the latest issue of Health Affairs, a health finance journal.

Today, the quality of medical care in many countries, including developing countries, is comparable to the quality of care in the United States, and the typical cost is so low that patients would come out ahead even after taking the cost of airfare into account, the researchers write in their article.

“It is puzzling that insurers in countries with expensive health care deny coverage for nonemergency treatment obtained abroad,” the researchers write.