2010 the Year of Voluntary Benefits and the integration of Medical Tourism
Mar 9, 2010
It’s exciting to see the growth of new and innovative products in the voluntary benefits industry. One the new products we are seeing adopted fast in the voluntary benefits space is medical tourism. Several top limited medical and mini-medical carriers have been implementing medical tourism into their plans.
The main reason is simple, to have a competitive advantage over their competitors. It’s pretty simple from a marketing perspective. If you have a limited medical plan or mini medical plan that would cover up to $10,000 for a heart surgery including hospital stay, using that benefit at a US hospital really doesn’t mean much and may leave the employee out of pocket by anywhere from $90,000 to potentially up to $150,000 or more. Adding Medical Tourism and allowing the employee to go to another country for it, the limited medical or mini-medical benefit may pay 100% of the cost of the procedure. The employee may even be surprised that his surgeon is a top US Surgeon who traveled back to his home country after a career in the US and that the hospital is nicer than the employee’s hospital in his home town.
What shocks me the most is the Voluntary Benefits industries sole approach to implementing medical tourism, not just in limited medical plans, but cancer plans, critical illness plans, dental plans, etc. Medical Tourism can make a voluntary benefit have 10 TIMES the value. Also, many employees enrolling in voluntary benefits in today’s world are ethnic employees, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and more. Many brokers, agents and carrier reps are Caucasian and therefore project that maybe they personally wouldn’t travel for healthcare therefore their clients won’t want to do it. They not only make the mistake about the ethnic factor, they are usually wrong about Caucasian Americans not wanting to travel. Many of the medical tourists today are your average “white guy” from a remote place in the US. Wake up and get onto the wagon of being innovative and cutting edge. Stop playing inside the box and start playing outside the box!
There is a large Medical Tourism Conference www.asiamedicaltourismcongress.com being organized in Seoul, Korea, April 13-15th, 2010 by the Medical Tourism Association,
www.medicaltourismassociation.com . The MTA and the country of Korea have created a budget to bring insurance carriers, agents, consultants and brokers over to Korea for the conference to learn about medical tourism, and to see some of the top hospitals in Korea. They are covering all travel expenses, airfare, hotel, etc. There are several voluntary benefits insurance carriers, leading insurance agents and consultants who are all going over, because they realize we are in a global world, voluntary benefits is changing and this is the competitive edge that will make them blow away their competition. If your interested in becoming an expert and being able to learn how to implement this, take advantage of the free trip and fill out the application… http://www.asiamedicaltourismcongress.com/vip-buyers-incentive-program.html
Yours Truly,
Jonathan
P.S. On a different note, for those of you have not caught on, everyone is calling it Voluntary Benefits. There may be a few holdouts trying to stick with the “worksite benefits” marketplace, but the majority of the industry has moved on. All the employers I know call it Voluntary Benefits.
Jonathan Edelheit is Editor-in-Chief of the Voluntary Benefits Magazine, the first dedicated magazine for voluntary benefits and worksite benefits with a heavy focus on employers, agents and consulting firms. Mr. Edelheit is considered an expert in US healthcare and formerly ran a national healthcare administrator where he implemented many cutting edge healthcare programs and voluntary benefits. Mr. Edelheit has been featured or mentioned in hundreds of magazines and newspapers throughout his ten years and last February was featured as a visionary in US healthcare by Executive Managed Healthcare Magazine.
Mr. Edelheit works with large US health insurance companies, employers, health insurance agents and consulting firms in areas of implementing new cutting edge healthcare programs and add-ons into their group health insurance plans. Mr. Edelheit is also an Editor and Assistant Editor of three other major US and international healthcare magazines. Mr. Edelheit also organizes the Employer Healthcare Congress, www.employerhealthcarecongress.com one of the largest US healthcare conferences each year along with the Voluntary Benefits and Limited Medical Conference, www.voluntarybenefitsconference.com ,.which takes place in September 20-22nd, 2010 in Los Angeles.
