THE ultimate medical tourists, coconuts have traveled across the Pacific using the ocean currents to go everywhere from Australia and Asia to Hawaii and beyond.

Besides being abundantly nutritious, coconuts have been revered for having medicinal value as well as subsistence and industrial worth. The coconut tree is known to have many uses from its roots to its leaves. For many around the world, the coconut tree is considered the “Tree of Life.”

Coconut water provides an isotonic electrolyte balance and is a highly nutritious food source. Coconut water is used as a laxative; as a cure for kidney stones; and as an emergency source of life-saving intravenous fluid.

The coconut has spread across much of the tropics, probably aided by seafaring people. Coconuts are tough, light, buoyant and highly water resistant. The coconut discovered America before Christopher Columbus. Specimens have been collected from the sea as far north as Norway.

The Viking charms of Norway non-withstanding, coconut trees love Guam. The coconut tree thrives on sandy soils. Coconuts need high humidity for optimum growth and are intolerant of cold weather. Optimum growth is with a mean annual temperature of 81º Fahrenheit, and growth is reduced below 70º Fahrenheit. With weak apologies to Jimmy Buffet, it must be said that Guam, Hawaii and the other U.S. territories are the only bits of American soil where coconuts really thrive.

Like anthropomorphic coconuts, many Guam people have been dispersed across the Pacific Ocean in search of better medical care. Because Guam’s still-struggling healthcare system has hindered growth, some medical services are not available locally. As our island people become more sophisticated, they have increasingly sought off-island medical care. Today, migrant Guam patients are finding that the sins of Guam’s unregulated health insurance industry have increasingly limited their medical options overseas.

Some of Guam’s sickest patients rely on the Medically Indigent Program (MIP) administered by the Department of Public Health and Social Services. Despite crushing travel and medical costs, Guam’s poorest MIP patients are sent to California in spite of the fact that Guam’s wealthiest patients predominantly go now to Manila citing cost and comfort concerns.

Like every good GovGuam-contracted attorney, Manila hospitals have sought immediate cash payment for MIP patient care, something GovGuam has yet to agree to do. Meanwhile, hospitals in California are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the allegedly late payment pattern for Guam patients. Guam’s own hospital repeatedly complains that MIP’s financial burden is one of the reasons GMH cannot pay its own bills.

In Hawaii, Guam coconuts will find that their hard-earned, government-subsidized, increasingly expensive Guam health insurance is not accepted at the Queen’s Medical Center. Many of Hawaii’s most esteemed physician leaders are still bitter about their financially painful experience with Guam’s health insurers and they refuse to see any more patients from Guam. The government of Guam’s health insurance is not accepted at Hawaii’s pre-eminent hospital because of previous financial disasters including the Guam Memorial Health Plan bankruptcy that left millions of dollars of medical debts in Hawaii.

Last week, Guam patients referred off-island for critical medical services awoke to find that their health insurance has just been rejected by the top hospitals in New Zealand. Over the past six months, Mercy & Ascot hospital in Auckland had contracted with Guam’s major health plans. Guam insurers had promoted New Zealand as a first-class, English-speaking, cheaper hospital option on this side of the dateline.

Reportedly, hospital board members from New Zealand’s top hospital decided to cut the Guam program citing lack of payment, delayed claim adjudication, and a bevy of other issues. On the heels of similar action by the Guam Memorial Hospital, the legitimacy of the unregulated, untaxed Guam health insurance industry must now come into question.