LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Rising health costs and dwindling insurance coverage are driving hundreds of thousands of Americans to travel far to seek crucial treatment overseas in order to avoid potentially devastating medical bills, a newspaper report said Monday.

    Although there is little data on the safety of such medial travels, there is no question that the number of patients considering foreign treatment is increasing, the Sacramento Bee daily quoted a medical expert as saying.

    "In the U.S., it's getting to be pretty Darwinian in terms of who lives and who dies," Arnold Milstein, chief physician at Mercer Health and Benefits, which advises companies on medical insurance, told the newspaper.

    Wayne King, an insurance adjuster who flew to Malaysia ten months ago to get two artificial disks to ease the grinding pain in his back, paid about 27,000 dollars for the treatment, including surgery, hospitalization, hotels and airfare. The same surgery would cost him 105,000 dollars in the United States.

    King said he traveled to Gleneagles hospital in Malaysia for the treatment because his insurance company refused to improve his coverage to include such an operation.

    Gleneagles is among dozens of hospitals in the developing world racking up international accreditations or affiliations with prestigious U.S. universities. Many of them boast English-speaking and highly trained doctors.

    Ten months after surgery, King is almost pain-free. His American doctor said his post-surgical X-rays and mobility were about what a doctor would expect in some who had had the same surgery in the United States.