The globalization of health care treatment is underway, and Kiplinger’s Retirement Report is busily telling newly minted, or soon to be minted seniors how to get better, less expensive care abroad.

Kiplinger’s start with an entrepreneur whose health insurance became so expensive they made the rational economic decision to drop it — and instead use the money to treat their number one health problem, a blown out knee.

[ATTENTION HOSPITALS AND INSURERS: if you don’t make insurance and treatment affordable, by opening up your process to competition and new health care financing strategies, Americans will choose a more effective solution to their needs.]

Why pay $1,400+ per month for insurance that will not cover your bum knee?

Why get care for that knee when U.S. hospitals, who cannot price their services based on reality, want to charge you $90,000?

The answer is you effectively give the insurance and the hospitals the bird, spend $17,000 (all-in, flight included) to go abroad where, says the woman with the blown out knee, “‘the care was phenomenal.’ Everyone spoke English, and the nurses doted on her. The surgeon answered her many questions. ‘It’s the way care used to be.’”

Eighty thousand Americans travel abroad for health care treatment every year.

Kiplinger’s goes on to state: “The rising cost of health care in the U.S. is driving the trend. Many medical tourists are uninsured like Percak-Dennett or have policies that have big co-payments or won’t cover certain treatments. Some travelers have high-deductible insurance policies paired with a health savings account. You can use an HSA tax-free to pay for many overseas medical procedures.”

The market is responding to irrational hospital pricing, based on what they can get away with charging (because of complete ignorance of what a hospital procedure should or actually does cost) and it is 80,000 person strong trend that should be encouraged.

Finally, there is a growing class of Americans — baby boomer seniors — who are just saying no to insane health care prices, and as employers begin to pull their employees into the health care abroad benefit, price sanity will be eventually forced on U.S. hospitals by the marketplace.

Lets hope this trend becomes a flood — but at least there is a significant alternative to nutty hospital pricing and their legal monopoly status in the U.S.