Outpatients: The Astonishing New World of Medical Tourism

by Sasha Issenberg

Overview

Need surgery? You better travel.

Globalization produces a lot of odd results around the world. One of them is that Hungary has become the dentistry capital of Europe: thanks to aggressive marketing campaigns and heavy government support, more people go there for dental care than to any other country in Europe. The towns of Mosonmagyaróvár and Sopron boast the highest concentrations of dental clinics in the world.

The story of how Hungary became Europe's dental chair is a case study in the booming practice of medical tourism. It is a rapidly growing business, as patients go in search of lower prices, and some countries have found economic opportunity in turning health care into a global trade. An American with insurance can expect to pay $90,000 for a heart bypass in the U.S., but only $12,000 if he or she travels to Thailand.

The question is whether medical tourism represents the future of health care, which traditionally has been a core responsibility of national governments. Sasha Issenberg's acclaimed books, The Sushi Economy and The Victory Lab, were early in identifying changes in the way the world works. A brilliant journalist with a keen eye for significant trends, he now turns his talents to medical tourism, and gives us a funny, vivid, wise narrative that will change the way you think about health care.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990976394
Publisher:	Columbia Global Reports
Publication date:	02/09/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Sasha Issenberg is the author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns (2012) and The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (2007). He is the Washington correspondent for Monocle and a contributor to Bloomberg Politics. He covered the 2008 election as a national political correspondent for The Boston Globe and the 2012 election as a columnist for Slate. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and George, where he was a contributing editor. He is currently a resident scholar in the UCLA Department of Political Science and lives in Los Angeles.

Sasha Issenberg is the author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns (2012) and The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (2007). He is the Washington correspondent for Monocle and a contributor to Bloomberg Politics. He covered the 2008 election as a national political correspondent for The Boston Globe and the 2012 election as a columnist for Slate. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and George, where he was a contributing editor. He is currently a resident scholar in the UCLA Department of Political Science.

Table of Contents

Prologue 10

Chapter 1 Orbán's Dentist 19

Chapter 2 Bismarck and Beveridge 27

Chapter 3 Torn Curtain 37

Chapter 4 Brain Drain 52

Chapter 5 Flying Bodies 68

Chapter 6 Europa 75

Chapter 7 The Bulgarian Method 86

Chapter 8 The Eastern Front 95

Epilogue 106

Acknowledgments 114

Further Readings 118

Endnotes 120

Editorial Reviews

"A small, sharp new book ... It reads like a magazine article—fast, entertaining and occasionally funny." —Nancy Szokan, The Washington Post

"Revealing and timely new book ... A notable strength of this book is Issenberg's keen and thorough shoe-leather reporting as he brings us through the hospitals of Eastern Europe." —Adam Gaffney, The New Republic

"Issenberg takes a look at the practice and its ramifications for the way people around the world receive health care. He examines examples ranging from a Hungarian dentist who has built an empire out of treating travelers, to heart surgery on the cheap in Thailand, to a backlash against foreign patients in Israel." —Nick Robins-Early, The Huffington Post

"Accessible, on-the-ground reporting of an increasingly commonplace phenomenon with serious implications for the future of health care." —Kirkus Reviews

"This book may come as a shock to those used to medical tourism books that are little more than paid advertorial, so based on the past that they are out of date. The Hungarian dental tourism business seems to be pretending that the book does not exist. Read it and understand why." —International Medical Travel Journal

"As medical and dental tourism options continue to proliferate in Costa Rica and around the globe, more and more patients will become tourists seeking affordable care away from home. This is the future of healthcare." —The Costa Rican Star

From the Publisher

2015-11-04
Monocle Washington correspondent Issenberg (The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, 2012, etc.) describes the rise of medical tourism, which draws patients from around the world to such unexpected places as Hungary, the acknowledged dental capital of Europe, and Thailand, whose government touts it as the "Medical Hub of Asia." Once, going abroad for health care was reserved for the wealthy. Now, tens of thousands of patients who feel they cannot get needed care where they live are traveling to distant places. "Emiratis fly to South Korea for organ transplants," writes the author. "Canadians travel to Costa Rica for check-ups. Yeminis with heart disease often end up in India." Patients travel to the United States seeking access to care; they leave the U.S. in search of lower costs. The $90,000 heart bypass available to insured Americans at home costs $20,000 in Singapore. Many countries offer special health-travel promotional packages, with some clinicians sending chauffeured cars to collect patients at airports. Turkey's 2014 economic modernization plan calls for expanded medical tourism. With a focus on Eastern Europe, the author traces the globalization-driven growth of the search for better health care, offering many stories of practitioners who provide dental implants, joint replacements, and other procedures. He details the growth of national health systems since the 1880s, takes into account the health travel-related effects of the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the European Union, and finds that the revenues of foreign patients bolster the budgets of hospitals. At the same time, local patients often lack the means to pay for care or linger on waiting lists. In Issenberg's view, the scarcity of care for locals is caused not by health tourism but by local government policy. Policymakers will benefit from the author's densely detailed but accessible, on-the-ground reporting of an increasingly commonplace phenomenon with serious implications for the future of health care.

Kirkus Reviews