Western patients are increasingly traveling to developing countries for health care and developing countries are increasingly offering their skills and facilities to paying foreign customers. This international trade in medical services has huge economic potential for developing countries and serious implications for health care across the globe. The potential is explored in this book through analysis of the market for medical tourism and identification of its link to economic growth. The authors propose that medical tourism is not a universally feasible growth strategy. Instead, it is successful only in countries with economic and political advantages that enable them to navigate around international and domestic obstacles to trade in medical services. It is also suggested that a successful medical tourism industry, when coupled with cooperation between the private and public sectors, may lead to public health improvements in developing countries.

“This book by Milica and Karla Bookman is truly groundbreaking.  It not only explores a subject that has been missed by researchers and policy makers but also makes a unique contribution to our understanding of globalization.  This book demonstrates the extent to which globalization has extended itself to services and that certain types of expertise which were thought to be non-tradeable have been transformed. When tens if not hundreds of thousands of people from the industrialized world are ready to move to obtain medical attention in the developing one, with all that this requires in terms of sophisticated technology and a highly skilled labor, it then means that we are on the verge of a revolutionary change that is far deeper than we had ever anticipated.  The implication of the Bookman and Bookman book is that we may be moving into a world where the only non-tradable services will be offered by your barber and car mechanic.”
--Henri J. Barkey, Department Chair and Cohen Professor of International Relations, Lehigh University

Milica Z. Bookman is Professor of Economics at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.  She is the author of nine books, including Tourists, Migrants and Refugees as well as The Demographic Struggle for Power.  She is the recipient of the Tengelmann Award for excellence in research.