In the hilarious Neil Simon movie "Murder by Death" Eileen Brennan's character goes over a brief biography of Lionel Twain, played by Truman Capote, the host of their mystery weekend. One humorous fact in Twain's biography was that he was once picked up in El Paso, Texas, "for trying to smuggle a truckload of rich, white Americans across the border into Mexico to pick melons."

Imagine Americans crossing the border into Mexico, not for alcohol and tacos, but for common surgical procedures. That's what's starting to happen in one of Michael Moore's medical paradises: Great Britain.

Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.

And by the end of the decade 200,000 "health tourists" will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.

Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists.

As P.J. O'Rourke says: "You think health care is expensive now; wait until it's free."