“Medical tourism is the travel of individuals from a home country like the US, Britain, even Singapore, Thailand in the region to a destination for the primary purpose of seeking medical care," said Glenn Cohen, the Co-Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at the Harvard University law school.

He said medical tourism comes in what he terms "three flavors".

“The first flavor ,especially in the US, is uninsured or underinsured individuals who are doing price shopping. By one estimate, getting angioplasty out of pocket in the United States would cost about $98,000. If you’re getting it in Thailand or Singapore you’re looking at $13,000. So huge cost saving is one aspect of looking for medical travel abroad. A second group of people are people who have insurance coverage that gives them an incentive to go abroad. We have a little bit of that in the US. And then a third category are individuals who are seeking to avoid domestic prohibition or unavailability of a service. For example, a lot of Irish engage in what could be called “abortion tourism, “people travel to Switzerland for assisted suicide and people travel elsewhere for stem cell therapy and the like, and of course to India for surrogacy tourism and the like," he said.

Cohen says has translated into big businesses around the world..

“Cuba in 2004 made about $20 million on medical tours, Jordan, about $500 million. Its estimated that by 2012, India will be looking at about $2.2 billion in revenue. This is a very fast growing industry and a number of countries are making a very concerted effort to corner at least the regional market. There is some division as to the kind of services they offer. But it’s a very lucrative industry and there are also all kinds of other players who we call intermediaries or facilitators who try to arrange travel for you and kind of act as concierges in some way in the industry," he said.

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