Globalization and medical tourism: the North American
experience
Comment on “Patient mobility in the global marketplace: a multidisciplinary perspective”
Neil Lunt and Russel Mannion provide an overview of the current state of the medical tourism literature and propose
areas for future research in health policy and management. The authors also identify the main unanswered questions
in this field ranging from the real size of the medical tourism market to the particular health profiles of transnational
patients. In addition, they highlight unexplored areas of research from health economics, ethics, policy and management
perspectives. To this very insightful editorial I would add the international trade perspective. While globalization
has permeated labor and capital, services such as healthcare are still highly regulated by governments, constrained
to regional or national borders and protected by organized interests. Heterogeneity of healthcare regulations and
lack of cross-country reciprocity agreements act as barriers to the development of more widespread and dynamic
medical tourism markets. To picture these barriers to transnational health services I use evidence from North America,
identifying different “pull and push factors” for medical tourist in this region, discussing how economic integration and
healthcare reform might shift the incentives to utilize healthcare abroa