View Full Version : Been thinking about this.......getting the cheapest products outside U.S.
I'm just wondering about this.
There have been several posts about going to Mexico to get cheaper dental care, eye glasses, surgery, etc.
If you feel that it isn't right for U.S. companies to go to foreign countries to manufacture, then how do you justify taking your business outside the country?
Just curious.
I remember a discussion about that on the old forums, maybe 6 or 7 years ago. The short answer seemed to be, people are frugal, corporations are evil. Nuff said!!
Of course, that's more attempted justification than answer but sometimes that's all ya got.
I think the main reason is that many people in the USA don't have medical or dental insurance and can't afford to pay the high costs for service in this country - and often can't afford to pay for medical insurance (or even get it) if they have a pre-existing condition or have on going medical problems that arose even while they were covered since many insurance co. may drop you from their plans once you have something wrong with you that is on going. It's probably the same reason many peole go to Canada for their medications - if you can't afford to pay for your prescriptions in this country (even if you are lucky enough to have affordable medical insurance the costs can be staggering) you MUST find it elsewhere cheaper or possibly live in pain or even die.
I'm insured at a level where the decision isn't something I have to make, but would probably cross a border if that changed and care was necessary. It would be a long process of decision making though, not something I would just jump up and do. That is as much because I'm 1000+ miles from a border as it is for reasons of principle.
I think the main reason is that many people in the USA don't have medical or dental insurance and can't afford to pay the high costs for service in this country - and often can't afford to pay for medical insurance (or even get it) if they have a pre-existing condition or have on going medical problems that arose even while they were covered since many insurance co. may drop you from their plans once you have something wrong with you that is on going. It's probably the same reason many peole go to Canada for their medications - if you can't afford to pay for your prescriptions in this country (even if you are lucky enough to have affordable medical insurance the costs can be staggering) you MUST find it elsewhere cheaper or possibly live in pain or even die.
Exactly. Although some would like to condense the answer into a politically charged sound bite, it really isn't black and white. Maximizing corporate profits really isn't the same as the personal necessity of a medical procedure or life saving drugs.
If you really wanted to connect the two, well, it's the insurance companies 'maximizing corporate profits' by way of kicking you off coverage when you have the bad fortune to actually need it that drives folks to Mexico or Canada to get what they need.
ApatheticNoMore
5-24-12, 5:50pm
I'm just wondering about this. There have been several posts about going to Mexico to get cheaper dental care, eye glasses, surgery, etc.
If you feel that it isn't right for U.S. companies to go to foreign countries to manufacture, then how do you justify taking your business outside the country?
Just curious.
Because I have more sympathy with blue collar workers (whose jobs have been outsourced - although they are not the only ones....) than with doctors and pharmeceutical companies who have all sorts of built in legistlated protections for their jobs. Basically many of those who have high paying jobs at this point, have it because their jobs are heavily protected by laws and oligopolies. And there are few professions that aren't seeking more of it (in California - landscape architects are seeking to legistate that their work must be required for jobs it isn't now - that can basically be done by other contractors now, massage therapists are seeking to require ever more education for their jobs - and no massage therapists aren't the high end of the income scale - I'm just saying legal requirements have replaced UNIONS in trying to assure good paying jobs). Meanwhile manufacturering and unions have been systematically abandoned and with it a whole section of the population.
On health care: phamaceutical profits are heavily protected by IP (of not only of that substance but of all closely related substances). Hospitals are getting boatloads of money from the whole insurance game and it drives up the cost of everything. Doctors are paid more here than anywhere else in the world (which is ok, that's probably a minor part of costs and I've nothing against doctors and they do have student debt, however you can't have that *AND* the systematic poveritization of much of the population through the destruction of unions and outsourcing of all the jobs. It just doesn't work very well). Blue collar workers have gotten screwed, meanwhile those workers (and companies) whose jobs/incomes are not quite so easily outsourced have written more and more protection of their income into the laws. And you wonder why the person on the losing end of this state of affairs wouldn't want to apply the same medicine he's been taking?
Now me personally: I've never gone across the border to buy anything (illegal fireworks maybe? :)), and never needed to.
loosechickens
5-25-12, 1:00am
Most people who cross the border to get such care do so because they can't afford the prices charged here in this country. Just in the same way that people shop at WalMart, even though most of their merchandise comes from cheap labor overseas. Because the people need to make their dollars stretch. And even though it works, in the end, against their own best interests, because it assists ever more in the great suck of jobs disappearing, they feel they must.
That's probably a better comparison than comparison with manufacturers moving jobs out of the country. Individual people seeking to get the care they need and products they want, at prices they can afford. The connection with corporations might be more that because so many jobs have been outsourced overseas that folks here can no longer afford what they used to be able to afford when good jobs were plentiful here. BECAUSE of the outsourcing of jobs, people more and more need to find ways to somehow make low incomes stretch.
Is that good? Probably not. But I think it will get worse before it gets better. We lose good paying jobs, which means that more and more of us can no longer afford to pay U.S. prices, which causes us to buy cheap goods manufactured overseas, and seek out discounted medical and dental care, which continues the spiral ever downward.
One might ask more fruitfully, why dental care, prescription drugs, etc., cost so much MORE here. How can a dentist, often trained in the U.S. as our Mexican dentist was, charge 1/4 of the price charged here in this country for work of equal quality? When a U.S. dentist seems to feel entitled to three or four times the fee for the same work?
Why do I need, here in the US., to visit a doctor, pay for an office visit (or now, have Medicare charged for an office visit) to get a prescription for my blood pressure medication that I've taken for years, when I can monitor my own blood pressure, and buy my medications in Mexico without a prescription and for less money (and manufactured by the SAME pharmaceutical company)?
Unfortunately, people are going to try to get the best prices for the things they need. It's why WalMart is as big as it is, and why people within reach of the border swarm over it for dentists, doctors, prescription drugs and eyeglasses.
My sweetie sees a dermatologist once a year in Los Algodones. His office visit is $40, but the one year that we didn't go and he went to a dermatologist here in the U.S. the office visit was almost $200.
If you have really good medical insurance, or dental insurance, you can use U.S. professionals, but if you don't, often the difference between having your teeth cared for or not, or being able to afford your prescriptions or not, is by crossing the border.
We began using dentists in Mexico because we lived there, but once we experienced the quality of care combined with the extremely lower prices, it was hard to shell out thousands to a U.S. dentist for something that could be done, and done well, for a fraction of the price in Mexico.
The whole process is part of the globalization of the world, which will eventually raise the incomes of much of the world, while lowering the standard of living in many highly developed countries who lose jobs and manufacturing.
I wish I knew the answer, but I don't. It would be lovely for everyone to say "Buy American", but that often isn't possible any more, or even remotely affordable.
One might ask more fruitfully, why dental care, prescription drugs, etc., cost so much MORE here. How can a dentist, often trained in the U.S. as our Mexican dentist was, charge 1/4 of the price charged here in this country for work of equal quality? When a U.S. dentist seems to feel entitled to three or four times the fee for the same work?
Well, since you asked ... ;) Your American dentist almost undoubtedly pays more for real estate, maintenance, and maybe even utilities than your Mexican dentist. The products your Mexican dentist uses may not have to pass muster with the FDA (a very long expensive process). Your American dentist probably is used to a certain standard of living, which likely is higher than that of your Mexican dentist.
And your American dentist certainly pays more for insurance, even for his/her waiting room, because so many other Americans like to sue people if they think things have gone wrong. Liability and malpractice insurance, more than anything else, adds to the costs of medical services and products because we have to pay not only for the high number of six- and seven-figure monetary awards, but for the insurance company's overhead and profit and for the cut the lawyers take.
I'm not saying standards shouldn't exist or that true malpractice should not be punished and its effects reasonably compensated. But it seems Americans in general seem to believe a positive medical outcome is their due. They seem to forget that diagnosis and treatment still is being done by fallible humans who don't always guess right. We don't sue mechanics for guessing wrong on what will fix our cars. But our insistence on this in medicine results in many extra "CYA" tests, markets for very expensive drugs, and a lot of padding for the insurance companies which pay the way for so many of us.
BTW, I'm not affiliated at all with the legal or insurance professions, and though I worked in a doctor's office and in a hospital for a few years and have some doctor friends, I have no financial interest in that business, either. I believe very strongly that the U.S. needs an efficient single-payer medical care system because I see that the for-profit insurance system is a travesty for so many Americans. I just know, however, that single-payer will fail unless we can get medical costs under control. And one of the keys to that is getting the costs of insurance under control. loosechickens, you're seeing firsthand the effects the American medical system have on your dental care.
Thanks everyone.
I guess we live in a society that has alot of things that places like Mexico doesn't. There's so many factors to why our prices here are so high.
We enjoy many of those things that other places don't have, so I guess we might be part of the problem of many needing to go to other countries to obtain certain things for less.
As others have said, as long as people shop for services, some stores are going to strive to offer less pricey alternatives meaning some corporations are going to make profit doing so.
Morally speaking, I see nothing wrong with doing so as it means that eventually everyone can access good choice in services as employment and education become globally successful. The transition is painful when the countries that have had good services and great employment lose jobs to lower waged countries leading to where the education and good services finally start to become routinely available. Wages are rising in Mexico and services are accessible by local residents who now have the better income to purchase them.
It was ever thus historically.
gimmethesimplelife
5-26-12, 9:42pm
I'm just wondering about this.
There have been several posts about going to Mexico to get cheaper dental care, eye glasses, surgery, etc.
If you feel that it isn't right for U.S. companies to go to foreign countries to manufacture, then how do you justify taking your business outside the country?
Just curious.Easy. I see it this way. If good paying jobs can be shipped overseas (to save money), why can't we ship our medical and dental and optical AND PERHAPS EVEN OURSELVES overseas, too? It seems like very elementary logic to me to do so.....having said that, though, I will admit I live in Arizona so it is very time and travel cost effective for me to get to Mexico for the simplest of issues - for others far away, it would likely be best to batch smaller issues or to wait until something something big comes up to justify time and travel expenses.....Just wanted to add that caveat in there. Rob
ApatheticNoMore
5-27-12, 2:23am
Easy. I see it this way. If good paying jobs can be shipped overseas (to save money), why can't we ship our medical and dental and optical AND PERHAPS EVEN OURSELVES overseas, too? It seems like very elementary logic to me to do so.....
ha, yea the high wage professionals never thought it would hit them, but you can't take the decent jobs away from large swaths of the population and expect everything to work great otherwise ...
having said that, though, I will admit I live in Arizona so it is very time and travel cost effective for me to get to Mexico for the simplest of issues - for others far away, it would likely be best to batch smaller issues or to wait until something something big comes up to justify time and travel expenses.....Just wanted to add that caveat in there. Rob
Yea, I was thinking about the math of this and it would only make sense if you needed major work. I pay around $200-$300 dental a year generally. I don't have dental insurance but I do use flexible spending for that (so save 1/3 or so off that price). Meanwhile gas is $4.50 a gallon here. Yea, that's getting near break even. I have vision insurance now. But if I was without any type of insurance and needed a LOT of medical things ...
Our insurance is changing this year, and we will be able to get dental again (have not had it for ~ two years) but I think for us, if we were to decide to go to Mexico for the big stuff, we might just do it. I have such skepticism for doctors (and dentists) here in the US, that I do not go unless it is a "have to go" sort of thing. Instead, I eat well, exercise when I can, brush & floss the teeth, drink tons of water, eat my veggies, and work at a non-stressful job. I take no prescriptions or supplements, and this year, we did not get a flu shot. Neither one of us got sick, while in the last several years when we got a flu shot, we both got sick... I think that if you work at being healthy, and eat real foods as oppose to processed stuff, then maybe you can stay healthy. Just my 2 cents.
ApatheticNoMore
5-29-12, 2:33am
In your decide not to cross the border, apparently you can get a lot of medical procedures cheaper in the U.S. if you use cash (rather than your insurance). And that savings is AFTER insurance negotiation and whatever they pay. Instead of paying $2000 for a CT scan you would pay $250-1000. Instead of paying $400 for routine blood work you will pay $100. So it seems that doing this could save a lot of money. But it makes it sound like you have to lie about not having insurance in order to do this (if you have insurance). It is not like this is some above board deal (it's all hush hush):
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-medical-prices-20120527,0,4627745.story
Really I've come to suspect that much of what is the U.S. medical system at this point, particularly the pricing and billing parts, isn't just inefficiency, and isn't just hard choices etc., but is outright scam.
Basic needs in the commodities markets is insane.
Basic needs in the commodities markets is insane.
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