Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism : Understanding the Global Market for Health Services

Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism: Understanding the Global Market for Health Services provides an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of the benefits and risks when health care becomes a global commodity. The collection includes contributions from leading scholars in law and public policy, medicine and public health, bioethics, anthropology, health geography, and economics. This timely and informative handbook looks at medical tourism from the perspective of some of the major regions that send and receive medical tourists, including the United States, the European Union, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Contributors examine how government agencies, medical tourism companies, international hospital chains, and other organizations promote medical tourism and the globalization of health care. The topics explored include the legal remedies available to medical tourists when procedures go awry; potential consequences when patients cross borders for medical procedures that are illegal in their home countries; the relationship of medical tourism to international spread of infectious disease; and the lack of adequate transnational policies and regulations governing the global market for health services. A multidisciplinary international team examines the safety, ethics, and health implications of the emerging global market for health care, and the issues that arise when patients cross borders for medical procedures they cannot afford or access at home, from liposuction to kidney transplants.Risks and Challenges in Medical Tourism: Understanding the Global Market for Health Services provides an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of the benefits and risks when health care becomes a global commodity. The collection includes contributions from leading scholars in law and public policy, medicine and public health, bioethics, anthropology, health geography, and economics.This timely and informative handbook looks at medical tourism from the perspective of some of the major regions that send and receive medical tourists, including the United States, the European Union, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Contributors examine how government agencies, medical tourism companies, international hospital chains, and other organizations promote medical tourism and the globalization of health care. The topics explored include the legal remedies available to medical tourists when procedures go awry; potential consequences when patients cross borders for medical procedures that are illegal in their home countries; the relationship of medical tourism to international spread of infectious disease; and the lack of adequate transnational policies and regulations governing the global market for health services. Cover Title Copyright Contents 1. Introduction: Health Care Goes Global PART I: DRIVERS, DEPARTURE POINTS, AND DESTINATIONS: SITUATED STUDIESOF MEDICAL TOURISM 2. The United States: Destination and Departure Point 3. Medical Tourism the European Way 4. Medical Tourism in Southeast Asia: Opportunities and Challenges 5. Socialized Medicine Meets Private Industry: Medical Tourism in Costa Rica PART II: BORDER CROSSINGS: RISKS, CONTROVERSIES, AND CONSEQUENCES 6. Unseen Travelers: Medical Tourism and the Spread of Infectious 7. Perilous Voyages: Travel Abroad for Organ Transplants and Stem Cell Treatments 8. Cross-Border Assisted Reproductive Care: Global Quests for a Child PART III: LEGAL AND REGULATORY QUESTIONS 9. Into the Void: The Legal Ambiguities of an Unregulated Medical Tourism Market 10. Medical Outlaws or Medical Refugees?: An Examination of Circumvention Tourism 11. Independent Health Care Accreditation: Medical Tourism and Other International Aspects PART IV: ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 12. Medical Travel and the Global Health Services Marketplace: Identifying Risks to Patients, Public Health, and Health Systems 13. Medical Tourism Facilitators: Ethical Concerns about Roles and Responsibilities 14. Conclusion: High Stakes Market About the Editors and Contributors Index