Na’ama Moran’s presentation on the business of Medical Tourism on Ships, given at the 2009 Seasteading Conference, can now be viewed online here.
Na’ama Moran, entrepreneur and TSI collaborator, believes medical tourism on cruise ships is not just the next big thing, but the next logical step in the health care industry. Using the existing hospitality afforded by modern cruise ships, the political advantages of location outside of any government’s EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone), and the growing trend of medical tourism around the world, Moran intends to build a business to provide revolutionary levels of hospital care to patients of all kinds.
Medical tourism is “an emerging, growing industry that is already well-estabalished in many countries in the world,” says Moran. Reputable US health care providers and medical universities have been forming alliances with foreign provider groups and medical travel planners to lower the logistical barrier for patients and increase reliability and authority in foreign providers.
The rise of medical tourism is already changing the health industry landscape. Rather than buy into expensive U.S. insurance plans that lock patients into a near-monopolistic hospital system, patients can choose instead to have the operations they need at significantly lessened expense, even including the costs of travel.
And the need has never been higher. 47 million Americans are uninsured, and 18% of the 250 million insured Americans are ineligible for insurance coverage of certain procedures, resulting in huge out-of-pocket expenses.
Operating outside of US jurisdiction, a medical cruise ship can offer equivalent cost savings to the services offered by foreign health care providers, but at increased levels of comfort and accomodation one would expect of a modern cruise vessel. As for the acquisition of a vessel, Moran notes, “this is the best time to get a cruise ship,” echoing Mikolaj Habryn’s research on cruise ships as residential seasteads.
A lively, energetic speaker, Moran seeks to assemble a team of business builders, seed funders, and analysts, particularly those with domain-specific experience in medicine, hospitality, insurance, and cruise industries, to kickstart her vision of MediCruise.
