The Bridge is in good company this week, in bouncing off Robin Cook’s medical thriller “Foreign Body.” The Economist led off its own lengthy feature about medical tourism with a reference to the novel, also.

… Central to the plot is the story of Maria Hernandez, a working-class American woman who travels to Delhi to get a hip replacement she could not afford back home. Alas, she and other medical tourists die in mysterious circumstances. Contrast Ms Hernandez’s fate with that of another American health tourist, Robin Steele. Mr Steele, a real patient, recently went to India’s Wockhardt hospital chain for a heart operation. Not only is he in fine shape, but he also enjoyed a holiday afterwards and saved several thousand dollars to boot.

Mrs. Hernandez’s tragedy may sell books, but Mr Steele’s good health is more typical. The future of health care, long one of the most local of all businesses, promises to be increasingly global.

Boldface is added for emphasis. The Economist claims “… to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” Apparently, for the 164-year-old journal, medical tourism is, well, just plain smart.

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One of the world’s most respected journals, The Economist, suggests this week that Medical Tourism is the proverbial tide that lifts all boats. In an article headlined “Importing Competition,” the magazine says the “coming boom in medical travel could help both rich and poor.”

By “rich,” they mean the United States and the developed economies of the west — not wealthy individuals. By “poor,” they mean the Latin American, Asian, Eastern European and African countries that are becoming medical tourism destinations.

The argument in “poor” countries against medical tourism is that providing private medical infrastructure for foreign patients will divert resources from improving health care locally. But The Economist asserts:

But the private sector cannot be blamed for the failings of state-run health bureaucracies in developing countries, which neglected the poor long before medical tourists arrived. And the foreigners’ arrival could improve things in developing countries, for the poor as well as the rich. Although the hospitals that cater to medical tourists will of course employ local staff, they will also create jobs, tempt home émigré doctors and nurses, encourage locals to train as medics, spread know-how and treat local people.

An argument against medical tourism from the point of view of the “rich” is that the United States (for example) needs to focus on cutting costs and improving efficiency of its own healthcare system rather than having patients go overseas. The Economist suggests that medical tourism is part of the solution, not part of the problem:

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Dr. Andrew Weil, MD, is a prolific author, perhaps best known for establishing and popularizing the field of integrative medicine, which combines conventional medical treatments and alternative treatments for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of their safety and effectiveness. His web site, DrWeil.com, is among the most visited medical sites on the Internet. The “Ask Dr. Weil” column, from the site, is a cottage industry unto itself; “Dr. Weil has raised dispensing health advice to an art form,” says reviewer Erica Jorgensen at Amazon of his bestseller Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being.

But I didn’t know until yesterday that Dr. Weil had ever had anything to say about medical tourism. I really should have known better. In an “Ask Dr. Weil” column from last fall, he confronts the issues involved in medical travel head-on, concluding:

Keep an eye on the growing trend of medical tourism. I predict it will become more prominent in coming years.

This, in response to a writer who said he was “appalled” that a friend was going to India for heart surgery.

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The National Center for Policy Analysis, in an article released today, concludes that “as more insured patients begin to travel abroad for low-cost medical procedures, medical tourism will result in sorely needed competition in the American health care industry.”

The NCPA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization with a goal of developing and promoting private alternatives to government regulation and control. The latest analysis was prepared by Devon Herrick, who also authored a lengthier study of medical tourism and travel in Nov. 2007 titled Medical Tourism: Global Competition in Health Care.

The latest analysis recommends direct public policy changes at the state and federal level:

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