Ethical Dimensions to Medical Tourism: Resource Depletion in India's Public Health Sector

Trade in health services via health tourism or medical outsourcing has increased significantly in the past decade. Today, many Americans, Europeans and patients from the Middle East travel to India for health services and procedures, ranging from cosmetic enhancements to complicated cardiac bypass surgeries. Amidst the poverty and disease facing India, private providers domestically are thriving by servicing medical tourists, as dozens of developing and emerging economies have jumped on this bandwagon for privatization. The literature on medical tourism is burgeoning with marketing descriptions, though few analyses extend to the deleterious effects upon underfunded public providers addressing the native populous. Using India as an example, this paper seeks to shed insight on how underdevelopment extends while private sector growth expands. Revenues flowing into India from health trade transactions are not aiding public health budgets.  As needs among the Indian people grow, professionals migrate not just beyond borders, but also to private institutions serving medical tourists to exacerbate disparities. Policymakers across India and many nations have failed to critically assess the broader impact from this medical tourism phenomenon in the context of provision of adequate health services to their local populations. The chasm between those who can and cannot afford health services continues to grow as healthcare providers and institutions increasingly seek to offer specialized, tertiary care at the cost of dwindling numbers of practitioners in the primary care and the public health sector.