Now is it really possible to save thousands on medical treatment without sacrificing quality? That's what we went to Malaysia to find out. Now as Americans we come from one of the most complicated and expensive healthcare systems in the world. And for many of us going to the doctor is a stressful experience, not just because of health concerns but also because of the high out-of-pocket expenses and even the risk of insurance denying your coverage altogether. But it's not just Americans seeking medical care in Malaysia many nationalities are booking flights and coming to Malaysia for treatment. Indonesians in particular make up the largest group of medical tourists here but patients from China, India, Singapore and many other countries also choose Malaysia for affordable and high-quality healthcare. So if you or a loved one is dealing with a medical condition where treatment is either too expensive or you're on a long waiting list for treatment or your treatment is not covered by your insurance then health care in Malaysia might be an alternative worth exploring.
So in this video, we'll share our personal experience with Malaysia's healthcare system from our comprehensive health screenings to visits to specialists like an endocrinologist and an ear nose and throat doctor. We'll also walk you through what it's like going through an inpatient surgery here in Malaysia including the level of care you can expect and of course we'll break down the costs letting you know exactly how much we paid for treatment and even do some comparisons between the prices we paid in the US and the prices we paid in Malaysia letting you know whether the costs are the same, cheaper, or in some cases maybe even more expensive all in this episode of Lucas World Travel. Well hey world travelers I'm Kendra Lucas and I'm David Lucas of Lucas World Travel and we spent a month in Kuala Lumpur doing health screenings and having a much needed nasal surgery. But first let's start out with Malaysia's health screening packages.
Yes a lot of people come to Malaysia just for the health screenings alone because these exams are quite comprehensive and gives you a lot of good insight into what's going on with you. Now we went to the Prince Court Hospital in order to do these Health screenings now during these Health screenings they do things like a a quick eye test, a hearing test, they do a full body scan so they can see your body fat percentage they also do a Dexa scan so they can see your bone mass and bone density. They give you a stress test and that was my very first stress test. That was exciting and also nerve-wracking. They do all types of blood and urine work with you so they can see all of your numbers. And they have different packages based on your age range so David had a different package than me with his package it included a visit with a nutritionist as well and at the end you'll meet with a doctor who will give you all your results and help you interpret them so you know where you're good what has some concerns and both some over-the-counter things you can do to improve your health or they'll refer you out to a specialist if you need care if they find anything on the health screening. So I really thought that
the health screenings were so thorough. I never gone through a screening like this where I felt like they touched everything that could affect my health. Luckily for me nothing surprising came up on the test but naturally, they still came up with some things that run in my family that I should pay attention to which is such valuable information to know. One of the things that I loved was just all of the tests that she's telling you about that you're going around and taking you're not taking them all over the place everything is centralized so you basically go to one building and they take you from this department to this department and that was refreshing cuz they just have a a simpler method and and that's very thoughtful especially for someone coming from a different country and they run a school of test like Kendra mentioned to you so it's a lot but at the same time you get a lot done in a couple of days or a day of having this whole screening done now it's a full day but you just get everything under the stars uh I felt like the care was just amazing so yes so in terms of quality of the health screening it was super herb so we were there from about 9 till 3:30pm, 9 till 4:00pm so that's a full day but they don't keep you waiting so long they're naturally there's a little bit of waiting involved so we maybe had to wait 15 to 20 minutes to do this stress test to see the doctor so there are some tests you do have to wait for the radiologist and the ultrasound but nearly everything else was almost instantaneous it was really quick so for David's test he got the signature mail package um which goes to 1,800 ringget it now for whatever reason they had a discount if you paid with MasterCard about a 10% discount so with the 10% discount so his screening cost $378.68 USD and I got the Well Woman screening package for 1650 ringget which came to with a 10% discount $346.66 USD. Now for the quantity of tests that we got I feel like that is a very good price heavily discounted and was very impressed by that.
We paid this cash out of pocket, no insurance nothing like that their medical care here is strictly regulated so prices for certain things cost that's that's what they cost there's no hidden fees there's nothing sent in the mail later that we still have to pay. I had superior care than I've ever gotten in the United States and the facilities at Prince Court were excellent as well they have excellent quality Machinery um excellent facilities they're not skipping on anything in that hospital it's very nice all right but next we're going to be moving into seeing a specialist now after the health screening David has had consistently high A1C and glucose numbers so they recommended that we see an endocrinologist for that so naturally when I went to the endocrinologist I had to take blood test again because they want to even though they're in the same building this particular doctor wanted to have the blood test again he wanted to make sure that everything that the general office basically told him was consistent and it was my A1C was high I was basically pre-diabetic going into the diabetic stage so what he wanted to do is bring me back and have me do another test and the test was a drinking glucose type of a test and see how it went through my system after I had fasted so he wanted to go further than any of my doctors in the states had gone and also too you have to understand here in this country they are a lot more strict than our standards are in America for something like diabetes so he he he wanted to make thoroughly sure before he put me on any type of diabetic medication he wanted to see how my body was going to respond to this glucose test and different things like that and I felt happy that he was even going further to to get more specific and so I thought that was also well worth it so the initial visit with the endocrinologist was $154 and they did blood work in the office because he wanted additional tests even outside of what was included in the health screening package and he wanted David to come back for a second appointment where he did the glucose test that's where they do a fasting blood draw he drinks glucose and then they do a a a blood draw afterwards to see how his body has processed the GL glucose now that second appointment with the glucose test I was actually surprised that test only cost $58 and 25 cents I was like how is that less money than the initial appointment we were very confused but so overall to get a diagnosis to see a specialist so I did take two appointments and about $212 to do that but again very good care and he gave us all types of options on other things that he could look at because it is a hereditary thing he's dealing with as well as a lifestyle thing for sure okay so now I'm going to talk about my nasal surgery I I have sinus problems from allergies and I'd had this for years it probably dogged me for at least seven eight years at one point it got so bad that I started thinking okay I might have to have sinus surgery and I asked around to people who had had it and my answer came back it doesn't really help it's going to hurt and all this kind of stuff so I decided not to do it and then last year it was really really bad so when I waited till we went back to the states which is good so now I can compare I went and waited till I got back to the States and I went to see a ear nose and throat therapist in the states I asked him and asked him and asked asked him what is this going to cost me they wouldn't give me any answers they sent me to for CT scans they sent me for Imaging uh I had to come back and forth for many appointments at least two or three appointments and they still wouldn't give me any answers as to how much the the treatment would cost they knew I needed treatment after the Imaging but they wouldn't give me a specific cost of how much it would cost me out of pocket so after all this back and forth they told me okay it's going to be about $8,000 I was I was squeamish about $8,000 but I was like I probably could make it work 8,000 bucks out of pocket I probably could make it work then the last time I went back to meet with the doctor and he took another look at my nose and all this and they changed doctors on me and all this kind of stuff and then the guy says to me I think it's going to cost after facilities and everything an ICS and everything I think it's going to cost about $188,000 and I couldn't believe my ears okay I I I just couldn't believe $18,000 and then he said well that's give or take it could be more and I've had that kind of situation happened in the States before so my estimation was going to be this is going to cost me $20,000 by the time this is done and that's not with the rounds of medication and all that that's just having the surgery having the anesthetics paying for a facility and then who knows what it's going to cost for follow-up visits and all of that so I talked it over with Kendra and I said no I don't think we should do that I said if it comes up again and we can get a better car somewhere in the world or whatever we'll consider that but for now no and I don't trust these folks to give me a straightforward answer what this really is going to cost I mean it could be something astronomical by the time it's done now this is the thing about healthc care in the United States where we're from we didn't feel good about the doctors like they didn't seem honest if they made sense like I felt I felt good that they were competent I felt good that they could do medical procedures I did not feel good that they knew how much things cost and that they would do right by us does that make sense I feel like they wouldn't have cared about cost they wouldn't have tried to keep cost down whatever it cost it would have cost and like David said it could have gotten up to 20 $25,000 because that's how it is in America they'll give you a price range of a difference of10 to $20,000 so yeah it could be $ 8,000 it could be$ 25,000 like it's such a big price difference that you're like I can't budget for that like that's not even an estimate anymore and then after we did all that decided not to have surgery they build us like we're paying cash out of pocket and they send us a bill which doesn't make sense by the way in the United States every time he would go to the ear nose and throat doctor it would cost $136 so he would pay that every time and we're like okay fine the last appointment they sent us a bill afterwards for $484 and we're like where is this money coming from I actually thought it was a mistake I went to correct it I went back up to the office to correct it because I thought it was a mistake and it's like I feel like you're scamming us because we pay cash every time we come and we don't know ow anything when we leave and that should be it how are you going to send me a bill for three times as much as what we pay for an appointment if does not seem right it does not seem ethical and this is why we're not going to P get medical care in the United States like that is just craziness so when we came here we said okay you know what maybe we'll get my nose fixed and kendri started doing some research and had heard about this place and I was still skeptical to be honest but I was like okay we'll check it out and we'll see cuz we can always say no right so we got here and this is how much it cost so we come from Medical Care and Malaysia it's very easy it's very straightforward I know this sounds weird but I found this ear nose and throat doctor on Google Maps because he had great reviews and literally everyone's like he did surgery on my nose I can breathe now it was very easy to work with him so I'm like okay this is our guy this is where we're going and he's at Glen Eagles hospital and he doesn't even take appointments it's just Walkin only so we go during his office hours and get seen and I feel good about the guy so he keeps saying that it's going to be about 25,000 ringget and that's currently about $5500 so we're like oh my goodness that's a great price because even in the US their first price was $8,000 before it was $18,000 so we're like yes let's do it sign us up we're ready but naturally you have to do more than just that initial meeting with the doctor so we had to repeat a lot of the tests so our initial visit with the an te doctor was $82 us he wanted to he sent us to have images done of his nasal passages and that one was $142 that is actually a bit more expensive than what we paid in the US I think the US image was like $118 so just know things aren't always cheaper here then we had to go back after he had the images done and then he did a scope of David's nose in the office and that was $113 and from there they went ahead and scheduled the surgery we had the appointment and he booked the surgery 5 days later so that's pretty quick first of all so that's another thing you can get into surgery very quickly in Malaysia he wanted him to take certain medicines like antibiotics steroids to mitigate any problems that could present during the surgery so we got medications too to the tune of about I want to say $60 alog together for the medications we needed before the surgery when you go for any type of impatient procedure in Malaysia you're going to pay a deposit UPF front for us it was 20,000 ringget so that's about $4,400 and then you'll pay the remaining balance at the end at discharge so when I paay the deposit for the surgery they do tell you okay we you're going to pay a 20,000 ringget deposit we expect it's going to cost 25,000 ringget but it could cost more and it could cost less so they do warn you upfront that it could be variable in the price which I like okay it's Medical Care you can't be precisely right can you so but at the end of all that guess how much our bill wound up being it wound up being 28,000 ringget so the doctor was pretty close in his estimate so that's only a 3000 ringget difference and that's about $667 difference in what he told us and I'm actually okay with that because let me tell you it's much better to be you know $600 off tend to be $10,000 off like you are in the US. I can absorb $600 I cannot absorb $10,000 that is pure Insanity. So I'm very glad we came here for that it was way more affordable so we did that and I feel like the care he got in the hospital was superb the nurses were so sweet they all spoke English and to be honest they kept him in the hospital he was in the hospital for just a little bit over 24 hours like that would have never happened in the US like in the US they would have had the surgery maybe kept him a few hours afterwards and then sent his butt home but I felt like they did a good job of after surgery care and really kept a good eye on him giving him the medicine he needed make sure he wasn't in pain and I want to say you weren't in pain at all after surgery I was like impressed by it yeah they took very good care of me in the hospital I didn't have any issues um in my recovery room at all and we don't dismiss the fact that there are professionals all over the world who can help you and they can help you for much less so I just I just look at that and I say wow um I understand why people come remember I said I was skeptical at first but now I understand why people would spend their money on a plane ticket to come here and have their serious surgeries here where they can pay out of pocket afford it and not be not feel like they got ripped off or have to spend all their life savings because they had they had a medical condition you know or go bankrupt because they had a medical condition and after the surgery David felled up with the doctor two times the first one is after they remove any type of nasal polyps or nasal things they put a gel in your nose to stop the bleeding cuz you know there's a lot of blood vessels in the nose so he had to go in the first time just a few days after surgery for him to remove the gel and then he came in two weeks later for him to just check the work to make sure everything was healing all right and now he has like six months worth of nasal spray to do in order to maintain the results and all of that so those last two follow-up appointments were $113 and $117 because he had to use the scope each time they do charge you for the procedures that they do that day so for example the first time he went he didn't get his nose scope so it was a bit less and the follow-up times he went he always had his nose scope so it was always around $113 USD. Another thing is when you go see these specialists you will not know how much it's going to cost exactly they can give you a range of like the procedures they do in office and how much you can expect to to pay the cheapest we paid to see a specialist is $58 but on average is going to be in the $90 to $120 range to see a specialist. I think that what I observed was because their medical health care thing here is regulated that there are specific prices for each thing so that's why he could give a very credible estimate because he's he's done this so many times before so he could say well typically it's going to be around this amount now it might be more it might be less but it's going to be really clo and he gave us close he gave us within $600 of what we thought it was going to be but it didn't turn out to be a nightmare this really opened my eyes to other opportunity so this was a really great benefit to us that we came when we did and did did the things that we did so I'm I'm very pleased with it and another thing I liked about our ENT doctor which I wasn't expecting is that he gave us his WhatsApp number so we had Direct access to the doctor and he would like message us and be like how's David is doing and I'm like this doctor is like literally text messaging me like this has never happened in the history of my life I felt super confident both in his skills and his care like he actually cared about David and yeah he was just a pleasure really.
So do we recommend health care in Malaysia? Yes absolutely highly A+ score 100% well done now for us we got care both at Prince Court Medical Center and Glenn Eagles and both hospitals were excellent we can't speak for other hospitals I imagine that they're great as well but we can give those private hospitals our highest recommendation um Malaysia also has a public Hospital a public health care system I do believe that's just for Malaysians but I do think like Malaysians only have to pay maybe one ringot to get care here so almost free almost free like one ringget it might be 20 cents so it's literally free and we're very jealous of that but even Malaysians a lot of times they'll go to a private hospital because the public system can have a long wait list so they might have to wait long for treatment or procedures so sometimes they'll go private as well. It's good to know the citizens here do have a free option or a lowcost option as well but I don't think foreigners can use the public system so you will have to go private there's already so many proven methods to have universal health care and Canada, the UK, France they all have models that work very well and their life expectancy is so much higher than ours and it's just such a shame that you know we're paying a lot of money to die earlier and it doesn't have to be that way not that I want to end on a sad note like that but if you're in one of those predicaments kind of like we were where the treatment you need is not covered you have to wait too long for it or um it's just too darn expensive then consider Malaysia CU Ser seriously um plane tickets and even a monthly airbn rental uh if you add that into the hospital charge and how much they were going to charge us back in the US it's still a lot cheaper a lot and you get a little vacation where you can see a new country experience new things so it's just win-win win win win but no matter what country you are from we can highly recommend Med cool tourism in Malaysia it's a lovely country it's a great place to stay for a month by the way if you do need to have serious treatment and get the treatment you need at an affordable price but if you'd like to know even more about what it's like to travel full-time and get travel tips from all around the world please do subscribe to the channel for even more great informative videos like this up next next we're going to have travel guides related to guadaloop and Japan so stay tuned for that until next time check out our year in review of 2024 on the right there where we review all the countries we went to um after one year of slow travel as always though guys I thanks so much for watching thanks for sharing with anybody who needs some medical care and happy travel planning until next time bye bye right
2025-01-19 10:58