Lap banding, aortic valve replacement, prosthodontics, hip resurfacing: research any of these procedures, and the prices for them are outrageous in the United States, and in the West in general.  Those surgeries are also important surgeries, surgeries people need in order to function again.   Yet medical tourism offers a cheap alternative to these surgeries in many other countries.  Part of the reason why the industry attracts more attention lately stems from the rising cost of health insurance.  For many people in the United States, health insurance, though considered a necessity, is unfortunately not a possibility.  There are some procedures, treatments, examinations, etcetera actually costing a patient less without insurance: with insurance and the co-pay, it can make financial matters worse.  Health providers in the US claim the reason their services are so expensive is experience does not come cheaply.  Yet medical tourism is cheap, offering accredited surgeons and quality care at more affordable prices.

Global healthcare is a burgeoning industry, a trend aiding more of the US public in getting better prices for healthcare.  With globalization, it follows that nations not only compete within themselves, but also within the world.  Such competition makes it easier for patients to get the lowest prices possible for a procedure.  Other experts who analyze the trends in US healthcare find that in comparison to the world, the health industry is faltering.  If the United States health industry does not adapt, it could be just as problematic as when Volkswagen and other foreign competitors jumped into the automaker market, harming the US auto industry.   A vast alteration would certainly help, but deciding any evolutions in the health industry has been part of the problem—and part of why people flock to foreign countries.  Much of the public no longer wants to wait for the latest changes to the US health system.  With the increasing need for cheap healthcare, other countries are responding.  A large majority of the medical tourism traffic originates from US citizens searching beyond borders, and offshore hospitals can afford lowered healthcare costs because these faculties do not deal with the same paperwork the US does.  Most of the money US hospitals and doctors spend goes into health insurance paperwork.  There is a labyrinthine maze of bureaucratic procedures and phone calls and paperwork to reject health and payment claims made respectively from patients and doctors: insurance companies often make more money for denying claims than for accepting.  However, when a patient goes to another nation for a procedure, it automatically eliminates this brand of paperwork, dropping costs too.   It is saves a patient about eighty percent in total expenditures—including travel.  The other main cause US healthcare is more expensive is liability: it costs a huge amount of money to maintain malpractice policies.  Though there is paperwork involved in a medical tourism surgery, it revolves what you may and may not sue for.  It is a simple contractual form.  Such streamlining efforts are what make medical tourism the most innovative surge in the health industry, regardless of whether people like it or not.