First Lady to Meet with Food Companies on Anti-Obesity Strategy

March 16, 2010

Associated Press

Michelle Obama has talked to schools and nutrition groups across the country in her effort to reduce childhood obesity. On Tuesday she will face the food companies that make the snacks and junk food that stuff grocery aisles and school vending machines.

Not that the companies mind. The Grocery Manufacturers Association — which counts Kraft Foods Inc., Coca Cola Co. and General Mills Inc. among its members — invited her to speak at its science forum.

Welcoming the first lady and embracing her campaign for healthier kids, launched earlier this year, could have advantages.

The industry is positioned to take some blows in the coming year, including a child nutrition bill about to move through Congress that could eliminate junk food in schools, digging into some companies’ profits.

The Food and Drug Administration is also beginning to crack down on misleading labeling on food packages, saying some items labeled “healthy” are not, and the Senate last year mulled a tax on soda and other sweetened drinks to help pay for overhauling health care.

That tax did not make it into the health care bill, but it could be seen as an opening shot in a quietly growing effort to target food companies, especially as local, state and federal governments scrounge for revenue in a tight fiscal environment.

Michelle Obama has not previously taken her anti-obesity campaign directly to the large food companies. She said recently, however, that she would like to see more customer-friendly food labels “so parents won’t have to spend hours squinting at words that they can’t pronounce to figure out whether the foods that they’re buying are healthy or not.”

She has also said she will push companies that supply foods to schools to improve nutritional quality. Her campaign is largely focused on school lunches and vending machines, along with making healthy food more available and encouraging children to exercise more.

Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the grocery association, said the industry is open to working with the government on finding ways to produce healthier foods.

“Consumers are demanding more and more healthy choices,” he said. “Our industry will do our part by changing the way we make and market our foods, but government has a big role to play as well.”

This approach is a far cry from the fights consumer groups had with food companies a decade ago, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“When I first started working on junk food in schools, it was a very contentious issue where we regularly did battle with junk and snack food companies,” she said. “Now it’s a whole new world, and many of them are supporting updating standards.”

Wootan said she believes that embarrassment is in part fueling the companies’ push, as more attention has been placed on foods’ nutritional values or lack thereof. More uniform federal standards could also be helpful to food companies, she said, as some states and localities are creating their own standards for marketing and making foods.

“When you see the handwriting on the wall, it’s time to get on the right side of the issue,” Wootan said.

Consumer advocates say they are cautiously optimistic about the industry’s involvement, but will wait to see how amenable they are to real change.

“They want to be riding that crest rather than fighting it,” said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, a Washington-based public health research organization. “There is a long ways between saying the right things and doing the right thing.”

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Big Pharma To Spend Millions To Pass Heathcare Bill

March 16, 2010

Politico Pulse

By Chris Frates

The drug industry, which has held off running ads until officials sign off on the final reconciliation bill, is growing more comfortable with the emerging legislation and is preparing a substantial pro-reform ad buy in 43 Democratic districts, according to a senior industry source. The amount and timing of the buy have not yet been set and hinge largely on action in the House. Still, the development is a substantial step forward from Monday morning, when industry officials, coming off a tough weekend of negotiating with Democratic staffers, said there were no ads in the works. The movement should also help appease the White House, which has been leaning on the industry to provide Democrats air cover, according to industry sources.

ANTI-ABORTION GROUPS MOUNT FINAL PUSH – Two of the nation’s most prominent pro-life groups will launch separate efforts today to push Democratic House lawmakers to support the House-passed restrictions on federal funding for abortions. Americans United for Life, the nation’s oldest pro-life advocacy organization, will roll out a $350,000 print, online and grassroots campaign initially aimed at eight Democratic lawmakers, who supported Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak’s amendment to the House health care reform bill. Beginning today and running through Friday, AUL will run newspaper ads in the districts of eight Democrats who voted for the Stupak language: Reps. Jerry Costello, Joe Donnelly, Baron Hill, Marcy Kaptur, Alan Mollohan, Earl Pomeroy, Nick Rahall and Charles Wilson. The group is soliciting contributions with plans to target as many of the 63 Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment as possible. And to demonstrate how unpopular taxpayer funding for abortion is, The Susan B. Anthony List is releasing poll results that show voters in seven Democratic districts oppose it. With this newest poll, the group has surveyed a total of 19 districts. This round includes: Reps. Joe Donnelly, Dale Kildee, James Oberstar, Allen Boyd, Earl Pomeroy, Richard Neal and John Barrow.

–The progressive groups HCAN, SEIU, AFSCME, Catholics United and MoveOn are spending $1.7 million to run ads in 17 House districts between today and Friday. The ads both support members who voted “yes” on the House bill in November and urge “no” votes to flip. A technical note, because MoveOn spends PAC money, its commercials will air separately. WATCH

– AFSCME and Americans United for Change go up with a $200,000 buy Wednesday through Friday on Fox, CNN and MSNBC in Washington, aimed at opinion leaders and lawmakers. The ad, which calls on lawmakers to hold insurers accountable, is running on CBS during the NCAA tournament on Thursday and Friday.

–MoveOn went up with a six-figure national cable buy Monday asking lawmakers if they’ll side with insurers or reform supporters on this historic vote.

–AHIP is running a full-page ad in the WSJ today and USAT tomorrow, which is an open letter warning Americans that without more cost controls the health care system could face a crises on par with the financial meltdown.

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Study Shows Americans are Being Overtreated

March 15, 2010

Associated Press

By Lindsey Tanner

CHICAGO — Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system.

Is it doctors practicing defensive medicine? Or are patients so accustomed to a culture of medical technology that they insist on extensive tests and treatments?

A combination of both is at work, but new evidence and updated guidelines are recommending a step back and more thorough doctor-patient talks about risks and benefits of screening tests.

Americans, including the commander in chief, need to realize that “more care is not necessarily better care,” wrote cardiologist Dr. Rita Redberg, editor of Archives of Internal Medicine. She was commenting on Obama’s recent physical.

His exam included prostate cancer screening and a virtual colonoscopy. The PSA test for prostate cancer is not routinely recommended for any age and colon screening is not routinely recommended for patients younger than 50. Obama is 48. A White House spokesman noted that earlier colon cancer screening is sometimes recommended for high-risk groups, such as African-Americans.

Doctors disagree on whether a virtual colonoscopy is the best method. But it’s less invasive than the traditional procedure and doesn’t require sedation — or the possible temporary transfer of presidential power, the White House said.

Yet Redberg, a doctor with expertise in health policy, takes issue with that test and a heart scan to look for calcium deposits in the president’s arteries. She said the calcium check isn’t recommended for low-risk men like Obama.

And the colon exam exposed him to radiation “while likely providing no benefit to his care,” she wrote in an editorial in the medical journal. Obama’s experience “is multiplied many times over” at a huge financial cost to society, and to patients exposed to potential harms but no benefits.

“People have come to equate tests with good care and prevention,” said Redberg, of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. “Prevention is all the things your mother told you — eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, don’t smoke — and we’ve made it into getting a new test.”

This week alone, a New England Journal of Medicine study suggested that too many patients are getting angiograms — invasive imaging tests for heart disease — who don’t really need them; and specialists convened by the National Institutes of Health said doctors are too often demanding repeat cesarean deliveries for pregnant women after a first C-section.

Last week, the American Cancer Society cast more doubt on routine PSA tests for prostate cancer. And a few months ago, other groups recommended against routine mammograms for women in their 40s, and for fewer Pap tests looking for cervical cancer.

Experts dispute how much routine cancer screening saves lives. It also sometimes detects cancers that are too slow-growing to cause harm, or has false-positive results leading to invasive but needless procedures — and some risks. Treatment for prostate cancer that may be too slow-growing to be life-threatening can mean incontinence and impotence. Angiograms carry a slight risk for stroke or heart attack.

Not all doctors and advocacy groups agree with the criticism of screening. Many argue that it can improve survival chances and that saving even a few lives is worth the cost of routinely testing tens of thousands of people.

Dr. Peter Pronovost, a Johns Hopkins University patient safety expert, said routine testing is often based on bad science, or on guidelines that quickly become outdated as new science emerges.

The recent shift in focus reflects evolving research on the benefits and risks of screening.

While some patients clearly do benefit from screening, others clearly do not, said Dr. Richard Wender, former president of the American Cancer Society.

These include very old patients, who may unrealistically fear cancer and demand a screening test, when their risks are far higher of dying from something else, Wender said.

“Sometimes it’s kind of the path of least resistance just to order the test,” he said.

Doctors also often order tests or procedures to protect themselves against lawsuits — so-called defensive medicine — and also because the fee-for-service system compensates them for it, said Dr. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth University internist and health outcomes researcher.

Some doctors think “it’s always a good thing to look for things to be wrong,” Welch said. It also has become much easier to order tests — with the click of a mouse instead of filling out forms, and both can lead to overuse, he said.

While many patients also demand routine tests, they’re often bolstered by advertisements, medical information online — and by doctors, too, Welch said.

“To some extent we’ve taught them to demand these things,” he said. “We’ve systematically exaggerated the benefits of early diagnosis,” which doesn’t always improve survival. “We don’t always tell people there might actually be downsides” to testing.

Jennifer Traig, an Ann Arbor, Mich., author of a book about hypochondria, says patients like her often think, “I’m getting better care if we’re checking for more things.”

Traig has had many costly high-tech tests, including an MRI and several heart-imaging tests, for symptoms that turned out to be nothing. She thinks doctors were right to order those tests, but that counseling could have prevented her from “wasting resources” and getting tests it turned out she didn’t need.

The new guidance from the cancer society last week on PSA testing, echoing others’ advice on mammograms, is for doctors and patients to thoroughly discuss testing, including a patient’s individual disease risks, general pros and cons of testing and possible harms it may cause.

Dr. Bruce Minsky, a University of Chicago cancer specialist who still favors routine mammograms for women in their 40s, said that emphasis is a positive trend.

“That to me is one of the greatest benefits,” he said. “It enhances that communication between the physician and patient.”

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Charlie Rangel Steps Down

March 3, 2010

MSNBC

Rep. Charles Rangel stepped aside as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday, saying he was temporarily giving up the gavel because he didn’t want his ethics controversy to jeopardize election prospects for fellow Democrats.

The 20-term Harlem congressman held a news conference on short notice, telling reporters, “My chairmanship is bringing so much attention to the press, and in order to avoid my colleagues having to defend me during their elections, I have this morning sent a letter” asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “to grant me a leave of absence until such time as the ethics committee completes its work.”

Rangel’s return is far from assured with the House ethics committee is still investigating serious allegations of wrongdoing.

The 79-year-old Rangel’s predicament was another jarring setback for President Barack Obama and majority Democrats in Congress, coming at a time when the party is scrambling to save sweeping health care overhaul legislation while still assessing a surging anti-incumbent fervor among the voters. Congress must also address billions of dollars in tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, an issue that could be greatly influenced by the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Pelosi issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging Rangel’s request for a leave. “I commend Chairman Rangel for his decades of leadership on jobs, health care, and the most significant economic issues of the day,” she said…

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Third of Young U.S. Adults Lack Health Insurance

February 26, 2010

Reuters

By JoAnne Allen

A third of young U.S. adults — nearly 13 million people — had no health insurance coverage in 2008, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

The survey of more than 9,000 people aged 20 to 29 by the National Center for Health Statistics found that 30 percent of young adults had no coverage and were almost twice as likely as adults aged 30 to 64 to be uninsured.

People aged 20 to 29 account for more than a quarter of the estimated 45 million uninsured people in the United States, although they make up just 14 percent of the overall population, said Robin Cohen, who worked on the report.

The uninsured rates for people aged 20 to 29 are typically high because their coverage is disrupted as they move from childhood into adulthood, when they may be losing the coverage they had through their parents’ insurance or have reached the age limit for coverage under a public program, Cohen said in a telephone interview.

“They may be taking jobs of lower wages or temporary jobs typically available to young adults and many of these jobs often come with limited or no health benefits,” Cohen added.

The White House offered a plan on Monday that would allow young adults up to age 26 to stay on a parent’s health insurance plan but would not require employers to offer insurance.

The administration plan is aimed at closing gaps between House of Representatives and Senate legislation in order to revive its effort to overhaul the $2.5 trillion healthcare industry.

The government’s report said lack of health insurance coverage may “leave young adults vulnerable to high out-of-pocket expenses in the event of a serious illness or injury.”

“Young adulthood is also a time that there’s a high risk created for unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and injury and these are things that are directly related to the need for health care services,” Cohen said.

More findings from 2008 National Health survey:

* Although 58 percent of those surveyed had private health insurance coverage, men with insurance were less likely than women to seek medical services.

* Young adults with no insurance were four times as likely as those with private insurance and two times as likely as those with Medicaid to have unmet medical need.

* Uninsured young women were almost twice as likely as uninsured young men to have had unfilled prescriptions in the past year.

* 10 percent of young adults needed medical care in the past year but did not get it due to cost.

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British Hospital Causes ‘Unimaginable Suffering’ To Patients

February 26, 2010

Times Online

By David Rose

Patients were routinely neglected or left “sobbing and humiliated” by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs.

The inquiry report, published yesterday by Robert Francis, QC, included proposals for tough new regulations that could lead to managers at failing NHS trusts being struck off.

Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses “left a lot to be desired”.
The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that “unimaginable” suffering had been caused. Regulators said last year that between 400 and 1,200 more patients than expected may have died at the hospital from 2005 to 2008.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said there could be “no excuses” for the failures and added that the board that presided over the scandal had been replaced. An undisclosed number of doctors and at least one nurse are being investigated by the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Mr. Burnham said it was a “longstanding anomaly” that the NHS did not have a robust way of regulating managers or banning them from working, as it does with doctors or nurses. “We must end the situation where a senior NHS manager who has failed in one job can simply move to another elsewhere,” he added. “This is not acceptable to the public and not conducive to promoting accountability and high professional standards.”

A system of professional accreditation for senior managers would be considered and the Mid Staffordshire trust might lose its foundation status.

Some NHS chief executives have received six-figure redundancy packages or moved to other trusts despite poor performance. Martin Yeates, the former chief executive at Mid Staffordshire, received pay rises that took his annual salary to £180,000, while standards at the trust deteriorated.

The Liberal Democrats claimed that he had also received a payoff of more than £400,000 after stepping down last March, though Mr Burnham said he had received “no more than his contractual entitlement”.

The Care Quality Commission, the NHS regulator, said that the trust under its new management was now “safe to provide services”. But it still had concerns about staffing, patient welfare, the availability and suitability of equipment at the trust, and how it monitored and dealt with complaints. The inquiry made 18 recommendations for the trust and the wider health service, which the Government accepted in full. They include a new review of how regulators and regional health authorities monitor NHS hospitals and a report on “early-warning systems” to identify failing trusts.

But the families of those who died or suffered poor care branded the inquiry a “whitewash” and repeated calls for a full public investigation. The Conservatives accused ministers of trying to blame managers rather than taking responsibility for problems with national targets.

Julie Bailey, who founded the victims’ campaign group Cure the NHS after her mother died at Stafford Hospital, said that the handling of the scandal was disgraceful and unacceptable.

“It is time that the public were told the truth about the very large number of excess deaths in NHS care and the very large number of avoidable but deadly errors that occur every day.”

The NHS Confederation, which represents health trusts, said: “The responsibility for the way this hospital was run rests with its board, management and staff but, as the report says, the framework of targets, regulatory systems and policy priorities it worked within are also very important.”

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Alaming New Tax Increases Proposed for Illinois

February 23, 2010

NBC Chicago

By Jenel Nels

In order to crawl from beneath crushing debt and reach fiscal solvency, Illinois legislators must choose from a series of options that range from bad to worse, according to a prominent watchdog group.

The Civic Federation wants to launch an intervention that includes significant budget cuts and the largest tax increase package in Illinois history, all in an effort to save the state from a $12.8 billion budget deficit.

“Doomsday is here for the state of Illinois,” said Laurence Msall, Civic Federation President, to the Sun-Times.

The group says it would support a state income tax increase from 3 percent to 5 percent. It also recommends the state tax retirees’ pension and Social Security checks be taxed for the first time at the same rate as workers’ paychecks. They want another $1 increase on a pack of cigarettes and to eliminate $181 million in corporate tax breaks.

If implemented, the Federation’s recommendations could shave off $8 billion, but there is a catch.

In order to implement those increases, the Civic Federation says unions should pay more toward their pensions and health care — but the unions aren’t interested.

“Illinois’ fiscal crisis has been many years in the making. It was caused by more than 30 years of pension underfunding and many years of spending unfettered by the state’s shrinking revenue resources,” said Msall.

The group’s plan would help alleviate the deficit by 2012, they say.

The state’s red ink has already caused a backlog of unpaid bills to public universities and schools, transit systems and social services.

“The Civic Federation does not enjoy advocating a significant tax increase in the middle of a difficult recession. However, continuing to do nothing would be by far a worse option,” said the Civic Federation in a statement on the group’s website.

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High Blood Pressure is a Neglected Disease in the US

February 23th , 2010

Reuters

The report by the Institute of Medicine, one of the National Academies of Sciences, urges the CDC to promote policies that make it easier for people to be more physically active, cut calories and reduce their salt intake.

High blood pressure or hypertension is easily preventable through diet, exercise and drugs, yet it is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, said committee chair David Fleming, who directs Public Health for Seattle and King County in Washington.

“Hypertension as a disease is relatively easy to diagnose and it’s inexpensive to treat,” Fleming said in a telephone interview.

“Yet despite that, one in six deaths in the United States is due to hypertension, and it costs our healthcare system $73 billion each year in expenses.

“In that context, hypertension is really a neglected disease in this country. There’s a huge gap between what we could do and what we are doing,” he said.

Fleming said the CDC spends less than $50 million a year for a wide array of heart disease prevention programs that includes hypertension.

Simple steps like consuming less salt and increasing the intake of vegetables, fruit and lean protein could cut rates of high blood pressure by as much as 22 percent, according to the report by the Institute, which advises policymakers.

They cited a recent study that found reducing salt intake to 2,300 milligrams per day — the current maximum recommended amount — from 3,400 milligrams a day could cut U.S. health costs by about $17.8 billion each year.

Helping overweight and obese Americans each lose 10 pounds could cut rates of high blood pressure in the overall population by 7 to 8 percent, the group said.

And a program that gets inactive people to exercise could decrease the rate of high blood pressure by 4 percent to 6 percent.

Doctors typically use generic drugs such as beta blockers and ACE inhibitors to control blood pressure. Lowering blood pressure can cut the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure and other conditions.

MANY INSURED PEOPLE NOT TREATED

According to the report, 86 percent of people with uncontrolled high blood pressure have insurance and see their doctors regularly. But Fleming said doctors often fail to follow guidelines, which is why many patients do not know they have the condition and are not taking steps to control it.

The group called for the CDC to research the reasons doctors fail to treat high blood pressure, and consider making blood pressure treatment a quality measure in any accreditation program.

The group also asked the CDC to urge the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs and private insurers to reduce out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments for blood pressure drugs, and to work with the drug industry to simplify the process for patients to get reduced-cost or free drugs.

About half a billion people worldwide have hypertension.

Risk factors include obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and smoking. Chronic illnesses such as diabetes, kidney disease and high cholesterol also can raise one’s risk.

Click here for the full report

White House to Unveil Health Care Plan

February 22, 2010

Good Morning America

By Jake Tapper

The White House this morning unveiled President Obama’s health care plan and the changes he wants to make to the Senate Democratic health care bill. Even before the release of the proposal, it had already met with fierce Republican resistance.

The plan will reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next decade, and more than $1 trillion in the years after that, and expand health care to 31 million more Americans, according to the White House.

Administration officials call the health care bill a “jumping-off” point for Thursday’s televised, bipartisan discussions on health care overhaul.

“This is our take on the best way to merge the House and Senate bills,” a senior White House official told ABC News. The official said the proposal was “informed by our conversations from negotiations” before Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected, thus depriving Democrats of their 60-vote majority, as well as from subsequent discussions.

“We thought it would be a more productive meeting if we brought one consolidated plan to use as jumping-off point,” the official said. “We hope the Republicans do the same.”

The White House proposal doesn’t just represent ideas but a potential strategy — to have the House pass the Senate bill, with fixes to come to make it more palatable.

With Brown’s win in Massachusetts last month, Democrats no longer have a supermajority, so they would pass the “fix” using a controversial maneuver that requires only 51 votes.

White House officials are signaling that Thursday’s discussion won’t be just a parlor meeting to chat about health care principles, though they insist their minds will be open to incorporate some Republican ideas.

“Maybe we’ll sit across from each other and identify 10 things we can move forward on,” the official said. “We hope new ideas come to the table. The proposal we’re walking into the meeting with is not the same one we will walk out of the meeting with.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., believes passing the bill is “possibly doable,” the senior White House official said. “But she may ultimately decide the math is impossible.”

If that does not work, the next plan is to push a more modest bill — a smaller expansion of health insurance reform, some tax breaks for small businesses to help provide insurance for employees, a more modest expansion of Medicaid and the creation of the health insurance exchanges.

Among the fixes to the Senate bill that the president is proposing are “an additional series of measures proposed by Republicans to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse,” a White House official said. “The president believes the bipartisan discussion on Thursday will be the most productive if Democrats come to the table with a consolidated proposal — what he’s releasing today — and he hopes the Republicans will follow suit and come with their own unified proposal. He’ll be open to Republican ideas, and he hopes they’ll be open to ours.”

For the president, the conversation starts with four key parts of the Senate health care bill, which passed on Christmas Eve after weeks of deadlock.

First are insurance reforms, such as prohibiting insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, a reform that Republicans have also said they would like to see happen.

Second, as proposed in both the House and Senate bills, the president wants to see health insurance exchanges created at the state level to ensure competition, a thorny point for Republicans.

Third, there would be no option of a government-run insurance plan that would compete with the private sector. The House health care bill includes a public option, but the Senate legislation does not, and even though the president initially pushed a public option as part of a health care overhaul package, he has said that to achieve compromise that aspect would need to be given up. Republicans are staunchly against any public option, saying it would hurt competition and the private sector.

Fourth, all Americans would be required to have health insurance coverage, and Medicaid would be expanded for low- and middle-income Americans to purchase health insurance. Both are points of contention for Republicans.

Click here for the full report

Affordable Healthcare in Mexico

February 22, 2010

Natural News

By David Gutierrez

As the debate over health care reform remains stalled in Congress, many U.S. residents are taking matters into their own hands by simply driving to Mexico for affordable care and prescriptions.

“I’m very lucky to live near enough to Mexico to get good healthcare at a reasonable price,” said retired police officer Bob Ritz, who lives in Tombstone, Ariz. Although Ritz does have insurance, many of his medical costs are simply not covered, or the co-pays and deductibles are so high that he cannot afford them on his fixed income.

“I pay $400 a month for my health insurance, and it’s still cheaper to come to Mexico,” he said.

In contrast to Ritz, approximately 46 million U.S. residents live without any medical insurance at all.

According to a study by the University of California-Los Angeles’ Center for Health Policy Research, roughly one million people go to Mexico for dental or medical care or prescriptions every year from California alone.

The primary difference between Mexican and U.S. health care is the cost — with many U.S. doctors having trained at Mexican medical schools and vice versa, and similar hygienic standards in place. Responding to the influx of people from the U.S. seeking affordable care, clinics in Mexican border towns now offer everything from regular dental care to cosmetic and weight-loss surgeries or other major procedures like hysterectomies.

In Naco, Mexico, Dr. Sixto de la Pena Cortes charges roughly $20 for a standard checkup. He says he gets about 15 patients from the United States every week. The most common complaints that he treats are “bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach problems,” he said, but he has also treated broken bones. Once, he referred a patient to a hospital for an appendix removal operation that cost $2,000.

“I waste up to four hours coming to an appointment, but it’s worth it as we’ll save thousands of dollars,” said Beatriz Iturriaga of Eastlake, California, who paid $6,500 for bariatric surgery in Tijuana.

A typical bariatric surgery in the United States costs as much as $40,000.

Click here for the full report

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