Under the knife across the border

It is no surprise that many surgical procedures are less expensive outside the borders of the U.S. (“Ticket to treatment,” Your Money, Nov. 2.)

There are ever-increasing burdensome costs of providing medical and surgical care in this country. The top three are 1) the costs of medical liability claims, 2) the costs of compliance with government regulations and 3) the administrative waste incurred in the cumbersome pre-approval/post-payment merry-go-round created by health insurance plans in their effort to return as little as possible of their collected premiums to the actual provision of healthcare.

If Americans fail to demand of their elected officials that these burdens and abuses be curtailed, we will one day be receiving all our domestic “healthcare” at Wal-Mart and all our medical and surgical care outside the United States.

Howard R. Krauss, M.D., President

Los Angeles County Medical Assn.