Bob McCarty Writes

Recently, a friend shared a prediction that prompted me to wonder whether or not the medical tourism industry will experience a boom if government-run health care becomes a reality in the United States.

In case you’re not familiar with the concept of medical tourism, it typically involves people from one country traveling to an exotic foreign locale to have a medical procedure performed at a lower cost.  The “medical tourist” label applies to those who opt to spend some of their procedure-related savings by incorporating sightseeing and leisure activities into post-operative travel plans.

Considering the possibilities, I conceived that the most likely ObamaCare-induced scenario would involve cruise ships that would otherwise have found themselves in dry dock as a result of Obama’s massive wealth-redistribution schemes pulling the plug on the domestic cruise industry.

Reconfigured as floating hospitals, the ships would cruise in international waters barely 12 miles off the coast of the United States.  They would be staffed by skilled doctors, nurses and other professionals who see tremendous benefit in being able to make a decent living as health care professionals unencumbered by bureaucracy-choked government panels.  Their patient rosters would be comprised of people hoping to realize both the financial benefits that stem from saving money and the psychological benefits that would result from avoiding an experience with a government-run health care system.

Seems simple enough until liberalism — or, more accurately, socialism — enters the picture.  That’s when I concluded that it will not work — not for very long anyway — due to efforts the Obama Administration will launch to thwart their success. Those efforts will include the following:

• The Obama Administration will refuse cruise hospitals entry into U.S. territorial waters and, in turn, access to U.S. ports. Why?  Because their operations do not comply with federal health care guidelines and regulations.

• The Department of Homeland Security will step up screenings of American citizens who attempt to travel outside of the United States while not in the best physical condition. I can just imagine Janet Napolitano saying, “We wouldn’t want to burden other nations with our sick or inform citizens.”

• Both the Coast Guard and the FAA will deny applications for operating permits made by land, air or sea transportation companies hoping to be able to ferry patients to or from cruise ships. Of course, President Barack Obama will describe the denials as being “part of a larger anti-terrorism effort about which I cannot offer more details.”

• Congress will raise the tax rate on income earned by medical professionals while working outside the United States to a level high enough to make it unprofitable for them to make a living. President Obama will describe this as “only fair to those who grew up poor and could not afford medical school.”

If the measures above fail to sink the niche cruise hospitals, I’m certain Obama Administration officials will seek international assistance — perhaps from the United Nations and/or the World Health Organization — to make them illegal and to make those behind them subject to prosecution from the International Criminal Court. Their justification:  “Those ships are needed to serve as floating prisons to house the thousands of Americans who refuse to sign up for government health insurance.”

UPDATE 12/04/09: Read Cruise Hospitals Not So Far-Fetched After All.