Healthcare - Are We Getting What We're Paying For?

I recently went through my company's annual benefits enrollment process and, much to my chagrin, was blasted with another sizable increase in my healthcare costs. Every year the costs of health insurance, my out of pocket deductables, my prescription deductables, etc. keep going up and it's starting to really get under my skin. This past year, in addition to having a baby, we've had a couple of hard to diagnose conditions in my family and the care we've gotten on some of the issues has been, to be frank, marginal at best. I'm starting to wonder if we're getting what we pay for here?

I've read varying reports on how much health care costs are rising, but the general consensus seems to be that they're rising about 3 times faster than inflation. Given that most of us get raises that, at best, are double the rate of inflation, we're looking at more and more of our money going towards health care in the future. That's problematic. Here's what's more problematic to me: According to the World Health Care Organization's latest quality rankings, we're paying huge prices for, get this, the 37th best health care in the world. We're sitting behind countries like Oman, Colombia, Cyprus, Morocco, Dominica, and Costa Rica. Seriously.

That brings me to the concept that's starting to pop-up more and more in the news - Medical Tourism. If these countries that I just mentioned have BETTER health care systems than we do, would you be willing to travel to one of them to have surgery? What if, by going to another country, you could cut your costs by 75%? Currently, this probably only makes sense for elective type surgeries/procedures that your insurance doesn't cover. But - given that it seems like insurance is getting more and more restrictive, we might be looking at a future that defines more and more procedures as elective. Consider these costs:

Carpal Tunnel Surgery (both hands) - Avg. US Cost = $20,000, Avg. Colombian Cost = $2,000
Hip Replacement - Avg. US Cost = $45,000, Avg. Colombian Cost = $8,000

This isn't chump change and this is only a sample from one country. A lot depends on what our currency is doing against the other country's currency - but the dollar's not going to fluctuate enough to make up this kind of cost difference. Something to consider as we head into election season - does anybody have a plan that's going to improve our quality of care without breaking the bank in the process?!