In Bangalore, India, Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital charges a flat
fee of $1,500 for heart bypass surgery that costs 50 times as much in
the United States. The hospital has low labor and operating expenses
and an assembly-line view of care that has specialists focus on their
own area. The approach works—the hospital’s mortality rates are half
those of U.S. hospitals. Narayana also operates on hundreds of infants
for free and profitably insures 2.5 million poor Indians against serious
illness for 11 cents a month.