Medical Tourism in Developing Countries

Promoting Medical Tourism ● 163currently promoting medical tourism might in the future price themselvesout of the mass market (as Singapore has already done).Bottom line: Both absolute and relative prices of medical services areimportant in determining demand for services. Both are subject to change,and the direction and magnitude of change, as well as its positive and negativeexternalities, must be carefully studied.Equality in Health CareGiven the low prices of its services, medical tourism may contribute to theequalization of health care. When individuals travel abroad for cheapermedicine, they might be buying services they couldn’t afford at home. Inthis way, medical tourism is an enabler, opening up medical care optionsfor a broad range of populations whose low incomes otherwise precludedit. An example illustrates this point: in the United States, a Nicaraguan-bornU.S. citizen works as a housekeeper for another Nicaraguan-born U.S.citizen. Both the housekeeper and her employer take their vacations intheir home country. Both make use of affordable health care—the formerfor all her needs, given that she cannot afford private insurance in theUnited States, while the latter chooses elective surgeries that are, quitesimply, cheaper. In fact, some of those elective surgeries are so cheap theyare within the means of the housekeeper, resulting in an equalization ofhealth-care services that could not have occurred in the United States.Another equity issue entails the elderly populations that live outside thecountry, such as in northern Mexico, in order to stretch their social securitychecks. There are numerous attractive retirement destinations where thecost of living is low and the elderly from the more developed countries,living on a fixed income, can enjoy a higher standard of living than athome. While the British retirees who live in Spain have access to healthcare, Americans in Costa Rica have a harder time fighting the system.If they can receive their social security check anywhere, why not Medicarereimbursements?Bottom line: Medical tourism might serve as the great health-care equalizer,enabling people to buy medical care previously beyond their reach.Health Sector CostsIn the last two decades of the twentieth century, medical tourism took offlargely as a result of the rising health care cost in the more developed countries(according to Vega, “Worldwide restructuring in the health sector dueto the high costs of medical services, particularly in developed countries, has