This week Republicans in the US House of Representatives will try to repeal the US Health Care Act signed into law last year. Many of the newly elected House Republicans ran on a health care repeal platform and now have to show their supporters that they meant it. One of the major issues that the Republicans have with the health care law is its insurance mandate clause. The health insurance mandate means that most Americans must buy health insurance buy 2014 or face financial penalties.
While there has been a lot in the news about the Republican calls for a repeal. A repeal is unlikely since senate Democrats, having a majority, would block the repeal bill. And even if it passed the senate the president would surely veto the Republican bill.
Now getting past the politics and looking at the health care bill from a medical tourism perspective; it will not have a major effect on medical tourism until 2014 when the health care mandate goes into effect. Even then there are plenty of procedures, such as cosmetic and most dental, that will not be covered by the health care bill. I said ‘most dental’ because there is a dental coverage mandate for anyone under 21, however adults and baby boomers will see no dental health coverage mandate. Also, dental treatment costs will continue to rise especially for high ticket procedures like dental implants, dental makeovers and dentures implants.
While we will have to wait until 2014 to see how medical tourism in the US plays out, dental tourism should not see any major changes in the USA until 2014 and beyond.
Smile Planners is a dental tourism and medical tourism facilitator for internationally trained dental specialists and globally certified dental centers and hospitals.
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