Ah, Cuba: sun, cigars and hip replacements

Ah, Cuba: sun, cigars and hip replacements

Medical care in Cuba could be a way for Canadians to jump the queue

KEN MACQUEEN | September 3, 2007 |

Cuba -- a mecca for fine cigars, rusty cars and rickety communism -- is
being sold by a Winnipeg entrepreneur as a cutting-edge destination for
health care queue jumpers. Daren Jorgenson, founder and "chief idea
officer" of Choice Medical Services, has sent some 200 Canadians and
Americans on medical tourism excursions to the island for services
including drug rehabilitation, hip replacement, eye surgery and breast
augmentation. "The standards of care are very high," says Jorgenson, who
also runs an Internet pharmacy and a chain of Canadian medical clinics.
"Obviously Cuba is an impoverished country, but when you're having
surgery done, you're in some pretty premier facilities."

Medical tourism is a growing source of hard currency for Cuba, which
trains a surplus of doctors. "I like to call Cuba's physician pool
Fidel's oil, an untapped economic power," says Jorgenson. His business
lets Canadians with the ability to pay avoid long wait times. For
Americans who enter Cuba through a third country to thwart the U.S.
embargo, it's a way to stretch inadequate private insurance. The cost of
a hip replacement in Cuba is $8,000, compared to $63,000 in the U.S.

Jorgenson met Michael Moore on a flight to Cuba while the U.S. filmmaker
was making Sicko, his critique of American health care. While Moore
praised the Cuban and Canadian systems, Jorgenson says Canada is at a
"tipping point." The costs of an aging population, new drugs and
diagnostic tools are unsustainable. Outsourcing medical procedures is
one of the necessary reforms, he says. "If we want to have a universal
health care system 50 years from now, we'd better damn well be prepared
to make hard decisions now." Most Canadian health tourists aren't being
reimbursed for their costs. "Five years from now health ministers are
going to start listening to us," he predicts. "Ten years from now,
they'll start paying for it."

http://www.macleans.ca/science/health/article.jsp?content=20070903_109071_109071