Medical Tourism and Domestic Population Health

34 Pages Posted: 1 Feb 2010

Date Written: January, 29 2010

Abstract

Medical tourism is a term to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care. Services typically sought by travelers include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries. Over 50 countries have identified medical tourism as a national industry. This article deals with the situation of India that is promoting the "high-tech healing" of its private healthcare sector as a tourist attraction. The government hopes to encourage a building trade in medical tourism, selling foreigners the idea of travelling to India for lowcost but world-class medical treatment and India is becoming a "global health destination". This policy however does not develops into better services for the local population as corporale hospitals are clustered in urban settings, their prices are out of reach to the locals and the quota of beds reserved free of charge to the domestic population is often disregarded.

Keywords: Medical tourism, Corporale hospitals, Life expectacy, Economic development, Inequality

JEL Classification: I12, I18, I38

Suggested Citation

Tattara, Giuseppe, Medical Tourism and Domestic Population Health (January, 29 2010). University Ca' Foscari of Venice, Dept. of Economics Research Paper Series No. 02_10, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1544224 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1544224

Giuseppe Tattara (Contact Author)

Ca Foscari University of Venice ( email )

Dorsoduro 3246
Venice, Veneto 30123
Italy

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