Globalization of Health Care
1. What are the facilitating developments that have allowed health care to start globalizing?
a) Health care in the U.S. is becoming more expensive. The decline in barriers of free flow of health care services /capital has facilitated and allowed health care to start globalizing. The cost of medical services in other countries (i.e., Mexico, India, and Singapore) generally runs from 20-35% of cost for the same procedure in the United States. Many people find it far cheaper to fly abroad to get treatment versus the high cost of medical care in the United States.
Furthermore, over 45 million Americans are uninsured and many more are “underinsured” and face high copayments for expensive procedures.
b) The quality of care in other countries is often comparable to what they would receive in the U.S.; new hospitals, most of them private, with highly skilled physicians, many of them trained in the United States or Britain.
c) The rising costs of workforce insurance are starting to persuade some large American companies to look abroad. Moreover, some insurance companies are experimenting with payments for treatment in accredited hospitals overseas.
d) Advances in technology, particularly the dramatic developments in telecommunications, information processing, and transportation have facilitated and allowed health care to start globalizing. The rapid growth of the Internet has been a major force facilitating and allowing hospitals in the U.S. to send images (i.e., X-rays, Ct scans, MRI scans, and ultrasounds) over the internet to doctors overseas specialized in reading/interpreting diagnostic medical images. This reduces the workload on medical specialists in the U.S., cuts costs, and is effectively faster (compresses the time because of the time difference between USA and India or Singapore, for example).

2. Who benefits from