>>Seven years ago I saved about $3000 on dental work. How? I forked out $2800 for three airplane tickets to Belgrade, paid a private dentist here about $800 for about ten hours of work, and that was it. After seven years, whatever the guy did still holds fine, so it wasn't shoddy or with lower quality. And most of the stuff he was using was imported, so it's not as if he was using cheaper local substitutes.
>>
>>And your point is.....?
>
>That even without any semblance of health system involved (we just walked into a shop, got the work done and paid the man), it was so much cheaper than in the US. And the guy wasn't short on fancy machinery, either.
>
>So something's wrong in the case of the US health industry. The market doesn't work - there seems to be a supply side dictatorship of some kind, or extortion, call it what you want. The outrageous pricing persists, and I can't find a plausible explanation for it.

First of all, quality comparison really is difficult in medicine.
Sadly, often higher price will be equated with better quality as no better indicator is available.
It is included in peer recognition (chief surgeon) and previous economic success as well,
fueling a part-bubble if secondary cost like rent or living cost (support staff) is factored in at world levels.

And the added cost of flights (and time...) are part of the above uncertainty: you would have local sources to query,
normal americans would believe themselves "safer" if they can in case of trouble take them to court in the US -
with the cost this adds to servicing all patients.

What I find even more ridicolous is the difference in pricing for identical medicine
and the tendency to work around this by minimally changing working componentes without
great differences in working mechanism and result leading to much higher cost than "old" medicine.
AT least there market mechanisms SHOULD work.