North Carolina company drops plan for overseas care

Union officials helped put an end to a North Carolina company's plan to send employees overseas for less expensive medical care after raising concerns that the practice is unsafe, worries similar to those that physicians across the country have voiced.

Blue Ridge Paper Products in Canton, N.C., planned to send one of its employees to India in September to have his gallstones removed and his rotator cuff repaired. The company said the procedures would have cost $100,000 in North Carolina versus $20,000 in India. A Blue Ridge official said even though the program would have been voluntary, the company no longer plans to send any employees overseas for medical treatment.

The decision came after United Steelworkers officials said they were concerned that the voluntary program would eventually become a mandatory program and threatened to file a lawsuit to stop it.

The union recently negotiated a new contract with Blue Ridge. Stan Johnson, assistant to the director of United Steelworkers of District. No. 9, said sending patients to India was never on the bargaining table and the company's plan didn't address issues such as who was responsible if something went wrong following a medical procedure performed in India.

"Medical tourism in general shows the fallacies with health care in this nation," Johnson said. "Who could have imagined? ... We saw industrial jobs being exported. Well, now they're attempting to export patients.

"It creates a horrible precedent in the country."

The combination of rising medical costs and a greater emphasis on consumer-directed health care has forced some self-insured companies such as Blue Ridge to search for new ways to reduce costs.

Overseas hospitals have noticed, with some taking steps to become accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. More than 100 hospitals around the world have received accreditation, including the one Blue Ridge would have used.