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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWorries grow as healthcare firms send jobs overseas
Source: Los Angeles Times
After years of shipping data-processing, accounting and other back-office work abroad, some healthcare companies are starting to shift clinical services and decision-making on medical care overseas, primarily to India and the Philippines.
... Outsourcing such tasks goes beyond earlier steps by healthcare firms to farm out reading of X-rays and other diagnostic tests to health professionals overseas. Those previous efforts were often done out of necessity, to meet overnight demands, for instance.
But the latest outsourcing, which have contributed to the loss of hundreds of domestic health jobs, is done for financial reasons. And the outsourcing of nursing functions, in particular, may be the most novel and possibly the most risky of the jobs being shifted.
At the forefront of the trend is WellPoint Inc., one of the nation's largest health insurers and owner of Anthem Blue Cross, California's biggest for-profit medical insurer.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-healthcare-offshore-20120725,0,5854713,full.story
xchrom
(108,903 posts)progressoid
(49,999 posts)And there-in lies on of the problems.
ananda
(28,877 posts)"Some experts argued that sending jobs abroad could help U.S. companies by enabling them to tap global talent and efficiencies, making them more profitable. When U.S. companies are stronger, the thinking goes, it creates more opportunities for American workers. Also, shifting operations to lower-wage countries can help consumers by holding down prices."
This is designed to appeal to the stoopid.
pampango
(24,692 posts)The core problem isnt outsourcing. Its that the prosperity of Americas big businesses which are really global networks that happen to be headquartered here has become disconnected from the well-being of most Americans.
Mitt Romneys Bain Capital is no different from any other global corporation which is exactly why Romneys so-called business experience is irrelevant to the real problems facing most Americans. Without a government thats focused on more and better jobs, were left with global corporations that dont give a damn.
But low wages arent the major force driving Apple or any other American-based corporate network abroad. The components Apples Chinese contractors assemble come from many places around the world with wages as high if not higher than in the United States.
More than a third of what you pay for an iPhone ends up in Japan, because thats where some of its most advanced components are made. Seventeen percent goes to Germany, whose precision manufacturers pay wages higher than those paid to American manufacturing workers, on average, because German workers are more highly skilled. Thirteen percent comes from South Korea, whose median wage isnt far from our own.
http://robertreich.org/post/27527895909
closeupready
(29,503 posts)It never works out that way, but they continue trying to brainwash people.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)name-brand clothes, 100-year-old-trademarked appliances, baseballs, hockey sticks, and tax document storage went to China and India. So I think they'll swallow this too.
TBF
(32,102 posts)Take the insurers out of the picture!
global1
(25,272 posts)So the next time I'm in a hospital - a nurse from the Philippines will be taking care of me from Manilla? Cone
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)This has got to end.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)live streaming video of American hospital units and direct $10/hr American "patient care techs" on everything that needs to be done. Right there, they just saved $10/hr on nursing staff! Srsly, though, I had been considering going into coding or transcription, but that's already on the way out.