The Rise of Medical Tourism

This year, hundreds of thousands of Americans will travel abroad, not to see ancient ruins or visit historic sites, but to undergo affordable medical care.
These medical tourists will go to Mexico, Thailand, Costa Rica and elsewhere for everything from root canals to hip replacements. And while this type of tourism has been around for decades, it’s become more and more popular as health-care costs in the U.S. continue to rise. And if Obamacare is overturned by the Supreme Court – more average Americans may soon be medical tourists as well.
Paul Vehorn is a behavioral psychologist, host of the Paul Vehorn radio show, and a medical tourist who’s visited Thailand for two different procedures.
And James Surowiecki is a journalist with the New Yorker. He explores what the bigger economic implications of medical tourism might be in his article entitled “Club Med.”