Patient X was a 40-year-old woman living in north Texas who weighed 300 lb. Recognizing
the obvious health dangers of her obesity and having had no success with traditional
diets, she wanted to undergo a bariatric surgical procedure in which her stomach would
be made smaller and cause her to eat less, thus enabling her to lose weight. However,
despite the increasingly well-known health dangers of obesity, her insurance company
would not cover this elective procedure. The best price that she could find in the
United States was $24,000; however, in Mexico, she found an alluring bargain at just
$12,000. Thus, she traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, and had undergone the procedure 1
year earlier. When she returned home, she began to slowly starve to death from a botched
duodenal switch. Her doctors told her that scar tissue had formed between her stomach
and esophagus, leaving an opening only the size of a pin, which led to malnutrition.
She required further surgery to save her life. Although she had been to the emergency
room 3 times, no hospital would cover her care because she had neither insurance nor
the money to pay for the needed surgery. When she contacted the surgeon in Mexico
and told him of her problem, he advised that she was not eating correctly. When she
requested her money back to help pay for the care she needed, she never heard from
him again. She finally found a bariatric surgeon in the United States to work with
her on the needed surgery; however, she is now both unemployed and $70,000 in debt
[
[1]
]. Such can be the real cost of the adventure for the medical tourist.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 13, 2011
Accepted:
May 24,
2011
Received:
May 24,
2011
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
