Option 1, you have the surgery in India where it costs $1,000, plus a 14 day hospital stay at $100 per night, and once the doctor clears you for travel it will cost the insurance company $200 to rebook your existing flight. Total cost $2,600.
Option 2, the insurance company pays $15,000 to emergency fly you to the US, where the same surgery costs $100,000 and the hospital stay $1,500 per night. Total cost: $136,000
Are those theoretical figures or something based in fact?
I could definitely have gotten surgery in India. And that was my initial plan. So I went to the "best" government run hospital in New Delhi, than the "best" private "expensive" hospital. The government hospital would have been OK if I had no better options. The private hospital was OK, but by no means as good as the treatment I received in the USA. The doctor, a UK trained senior specialist, misdiagnosed my problem. The hospital was "mostly clean". The surgery was going to be $2500 if I was ok convalescing in a room with 6 other people, or $3500 if I wanted my own room.
In the end I'm very glad that I came back to the states. It would have been a miserable experience to be alone in a hotel room the day after surgery. Heck it was a miserable few days even being back at home surrounded by family. Then I required months of physical therapy which would have been impossible to obtain while traveling (though I could have spent three months in New Delhi).
In the future, if I get injured again, I'd get medical treatment on the spot if I needed it. But not if I could avoid it. I wouldn't choose New Delhi for medical care, but I'd be happy to be treated in Bangkok. In six months I saw (as in actually saw, not saw the aftermath) fifteen motor vehicle accidents. Mostly motorcycles. One was a fatality. I was in two accidents, both in India within four days of each other.
If you have a $2000 deductible (or more), then it sounds like you're better off skipping the travel insurance policy completely and taking your chances.
I buy insurance to cover worst case scenarios. A $2000 deductible is cheap when medical bills can quickly reach the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.