Louis’s Reviews > Outpatients: The Astonishing New World of Medical Tourism > Status Update

“In any case, medical tourism does not create new inequalities in so much as it magnifies existing ones.”

“Israel makes cost control a priority over patient convenience. The excesses of medical tourism in Israel are well known. Under-the-table payments promote it, ostensibly to prioritize foreign patients. It is a global trend. Cases of patients given unnecessary procedures purely because of the revenue it generates. Some of these investigations found unethical behavior. Theft and bribery not uncommon.”

“The medical establishment chases profits at the expense of people it is supposed to serve.”

“At the time Israel received an estimated 30.000 medical tourists, many coming from the former Soviet Union. The hospitals were doing more to bring in patients they called “flying bodies” than merely advocating for the practice. They paid corporations to manage their businesses with private customers, and medical tourists to Israel enjoyed medical conditions Israelis could only dream of.”

Heart disease has long been the chief cause of death for Hungarians, but public money at Semmelweis runs out after about 1,800 pacemaker implants. To manage the cost of taxpayers, the government caps the number of procedures for which it will pay each hospital annually. This volume control succeeded on controlling the pay of doctors and nurses.

“The dynamics of dentistry is distinct from other aspects of medicine: the industry had been private for a decade already, breeding an entrepreneurial culture among dentists and an understanding of how to market themselves in a competitive marketplace.”

“Laws typically do not forbid individuals from traveling in search of better health outcomes. People and money can move freely across national boundaries, but the safeguards that national governments have imposed to protect their citizens from the unpredictable - safety-net insurance, consumer protections, the ability to sue for malpractice claims - usually do not.”

“But what did the presence of a Libyan woman in a Bulgarian hospital bed mean for a Sofia resident with knee problems? And could Libya ever develop a modern health-care system if all the local patients who had a way of financing their care took their problems - and money - elsewhere?”