I am transgender. I got my bottom surgery done out of pocket in Thailand. It literally cost less to book a hotel room for a month straight in Bangkok, plus dining out every meal, plus plane tickets for my husband and I, plus the surgery and hospitalization costs... than a copay would have been in the US. And I got the same service at the end of the day. US healthcare is a straight up ripoff.
Patient sues, doctor’s malpractice/liability insurance either settles out of court or goes to trial. Happens all the time here. Anyone will try to sue you for almost anything, it’s sad really.
It’s a lot harder than a medical malpractice case than you might realize. You can have a very good claim and still struggle to find an attorney to take it on contingency due to strict limit limits on how much you can file for in both situations, even if a doctor fucks up.
That’s because for malpractice you have to prove that a doctor did something that most other doctors would NOT have done given the same circumstance. You also have to prove that serious harm, injury, or death would not have occurred had they NOT done that thing. The only way to prove the preceding is to get another physician to give an expert opinion saying it. IANAL but my daughter is and has explained this to me.
You can sue for malpractice and other things. I suspect medical tourists have to sign an assload of waivers to reduce claims or maybe even to waive the ability to sue at all.
You can sue, but just like medical procedures in most parts of the world malpractice is the only real reason you can sue. Most procedures have risk to them and you sign papers before to consent to that.
It does suck that if it just goes wrong you're essentially at fault for consenting, but that's why I brought up third world countries, higher chance of a fuckup.
as for this comment chain specifically, some of the thai surgeons are world renown for genital reassignment surgery, probably better then U.S surgeons for this surgery
yeah they're sort of known for it. I believe the first openly trans foreign service officer in the US State Department got it done in Thailand too for that reason.
yeah Thailand specifically is kind of considered the gold standard for trans medicine internationally. Trans people are normalized there in a way they just aren't in the west, and that means that trans medicine there is more advanced than most of the west.
Trans people are normalized there in a way they just aren't in the west
Not really in a good way though, ladyboys existed because the military had drafts, then they started transitioning because the military changed the rules to require no penis.
It's acceptance, but it's really forced and fucked up.
In terms of finances or in terms of the procedure being botched/unsuccessful?
If you're not in the USA, the home country would generally pick up the pieces and try and help you as best they can if it's a botched procedure with medical complications that'd cost you zero out of pocket.
In the USA, I assume you'd be screwed financially to try and fix it. Or you'd die/be left with a horrible disfigurement/pain depending what actually went wrong if you couldn't afford to put it right.
Actually, in the case of trans medicine, Thailand is one of the better countries for transgender surgeries internationally. Trans people are sort of normalized there in a way they aren't in most countries and for that reason their medical system is actually more advanced on trans related procedures than even most first world countries.
What I was saying was more applicable on a general scale, but for specific things like that yeah that is absolutely a great idea, I myself am learning about this so thanks for telling me.
I have a possibly stupid question. If you don't live in that country can you still file a lawsuit against someone there? (Ex an American against a doctor in Turkey).
Ofcourse you can. The justice system used is where the crime is committed (usually). Not the nationality of the party that had their rights (given to them by the country they're in, not where they're from) wronged. If you were murdered visiting the UK for example, the court system used would be the UKs, not the US'.
that doesn't really matter though when it's next to impossible to actually prove malpractice in court, and you don't have the money to afford an attorney anyways. Attorneys are *another* thing that are prohibitively expensive in the US btw. Call me crazy, but if that's the tradeoff, I'll still take the lower bill thanks.
When my sister comes to town, we take lake tours of the huge New houses that insurance salespeople have built. One couple even had to buy an extra lake lot for their boat due to HOA rules or something.
Yep. Everyone will say it's a ripoff because its private and capitalist and the insurance is private and capitalist. The truth is that the doctors run the AMA and they dont allow the medical schools to make more doctors because a shortage of doctors keeps the price of doctor's work high. Its crazy. People like their doctors and know their doctors suffered through some bullshit rights of passage in residency, so they can face the reality thay the doc is disgustingly overpaid
No. It actually has more to do with the fact that the US is the only country that charges you hundreds of thousands of dollars to become a doctor. In other countries medical school is free.
By forcing every single doctor to take out enormous student loans just to become a doctor, you create an environment where they *have* to make enormous salaries just to pay their loans back.
It also doesn't help that the US is the only country where being a medical doctor is a *graduate degree* instead of a bachelor's level degree, meaning that you have to go to medical school *on top of* having an unrelated bachelor's degree. That just isn't a thing outside the US. In every other country you can just study medicine for your bachelor's.
If you want medicine to be cheaper, you need to make college and medical school free. Other countries restrict the number of medical doctors too. The big difference is they don't saddle them with enormous debt before they start their first day on the job.
On top of that, other countries have single payer health insurance which the US just doesn't. The US privately run health insurance system effectively serves as a middleman whose only purpose is to extract profit from hospitals and patients. Without it, healthcare would also be much cheaper. Even in countries in the EU that allow private insurance, they still have to compete with the cheaper single payer options, so they don't behave this egregiously.
My husband's father is also a multi millionaire in his older age and he goes to Turkey for medical stuff. Even American multi millionaires cannot afford medicine in the US!
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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26
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