Costa Rica Blog

Some of you may have seen this article before in our newsletter but it got so many comments we thought we should put it in the blog.  Let me also mention that the "executive check up" that I had at Clinica Biblica now has the cost of the check up listed in the article. (you'll have to read a bit to find it).  This is the second article we have written on Health Tourism in Costa Rica because the subject seems to get a lot of interest from readers from the US and Canada.

Boston Scientific, based in Natick Massachusetts, recently announced plans to double the size of their manufacturing systems in Costa Rica. The company is closing its facility in Doral, Florida eliminating 1400 jobs.  The firm is investing over $30 million dollars in the new facility in Alejuela, just outside of San Jose.  The company cited the availability of skilled labor and lower labor costs as the primary reasons for the move.   Boston Scientific began manufacturing in Costa Rica in 2004, currently employing over 1700 people in the country with plans to double that number in the next two years.  The company makes medical devices including a variety of medical delivery systems, stents, catheters, graft materials, suture devices, implantable cardiac remote monitoring units and gastrointestinal related devices.  The firm produces nearly 26,000 different items from 17 plants worldwide. The company is publicly traded on the NYSE with sales in 2008 of over $8 billion USD and 24,800 employees worldwide.

Health Tourism in Costa Rica seems to get a lot of interest from readers from the US as well as Canada. Background: Costa Rica has a nationalized health care system that is nearly free for all residents. Quality of care ranks #36 worldwide by the World Heath Organization (the US is #37) and yet the cost per capita of healthcare in Costa Rica is less than 1/10th the cost of comparable care in the US. Many procedures cost even less, in fact many procedures cost as little as a tenth the cost of comparable care in the US.