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The Ethical Management of Medical Tourism

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Medical Tourism and Transnational Health Care

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Abstract

The arguments of this chapter are as follows:

  • More and more reliable data are needed to be able to construct a complete picture of the phenomenon of cross-border medical care.

  • Medical tourism is the result of the liberalisation and commercialisation of health care.

  • The ethical management of medical travelling should be organised on the basis of the benchmarks of fairness. This list of criteria avoids a too simplistic approach of the developments.

  • The effects of medical travelling will be evaluated differently depending on the theory of just distribution of scarce resources: utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism and sufficientarianism.

  • The migration of medical personnel (the ‘brain drain’) is a perfect topic to study the effects of medical travelling and the implications of the theories of distributive justice.

  • The commercialisation of health care invites new players to the field (private insurance companies, brokers, corporate hospitals and so on) whose rights and duties still have to be determined.

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Authors
  1. Guido Pennings
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK

    David Botterill

  2. Ghent University, Belgium

    Guido Pennings

  3. NHTV Breda University, The Netherlands

    Tomas Mainil

Copyright information

© 2013 Guido Pennings

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Pennings, G. (2013). The Ethical Management of Medical Tourism. In: Botterill, D., Pennings, G., Mainil, T. (eds) Medical Tourism and Transnational Health Care. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137338495_11

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