Why is C.R. Less Expensive?

Why is Costa Rica Medical Care so much less expensive?

Let’s turn to a question that comes up very often with our patients considering a medical procedure in Costa Rica using Health Check Costa Rica’s total care services. Well the answers will probably not surprise you and here is the biggest clue. Which is the most litigious country in the entire world? That’s right! The United States of America is so ready to sue over any imagined discomfort mental or physical that the amount of medical malpractice insurance that doctors in the US must carry is exorbitant. An OB-GYN in Florida must carry $200,000.00 a year in malpractice insurance before he can make a dime for himself. This is absurd and these costs are passed on to you the consumer making for much higher overall costs. Not so in Costa Rica.

I just mentioned culprit number two in the grand scheme of medical costs in the United States versus Costa Rica. Medical care is free to Costa Ricans so the insurance companies and those that defraud them have not had an opportunity to grow in to the symbiotic overspending and corrupt behemoths we are all used to in the United States. Private insurance is a small portion of overall health care expenditures in this country. Therefore the pricing mechanisms, especially with regards to private medical care are much healthier and balanced based on supply and demand of the individual not corruption and greed of the insurance institution.

Finally there are many additional factors that are cultural and deeply economic that have a lesser impact. One: Costa Rica struggled many years as a third world country and with education and tourism fueling the fire, education has taken a front seat to ignorance. Bottom line; The Costa Ricans are hungry to join the western world both in education and affluence and they are currently working very hard to woo business from the United States.