Synopses & Reviews
Today more people travel to Hungary for dental care than to any other country in Europe. The fascinating story of how Hungary became Europe's dental chair is a case study in medical tourism, which has become a growing multi-billion-dollar industry exploding in places as varied as India, Brazil, Korea, and Costa Rica as countries rewrite laws to compete for patients. Doctors and dentists have to run a business, but does globalization destroy the dream of high-quality universal health care? Sasha Issenberg, the acclaimed author of
The Sushi Economy and
The Victory Lab, goes on the trail of dental tourism in Eastern Europe in search of answers.
Synopsis
Need surgery? You better travel. Globalization produces a lot of odd results around the world. One of them is that Hungary has become the dentistry capital of Europe: thanks to aggressive marketing campaigns and heavy government support, more people go there for dental care than to any other country in Europe. The towns of Mosonmagyar v r and Sopron boast the highest concentrations of dental clinics in the world.
The story of how Hungary became Europe's dental chair is a case study in the booming practice of medical tourism. It is a rapidly growing business, as patients go in search of lower prices, and some countries have found economic opportunity in turning health care into a global trade. An American with insurance can expect to pay $90,000 for a heart bypass in the U.S., but only $12,000 if he or she travels to Thailand.
The question is whether medical tourism represents the future of health care, which traditionally has been a core responsibility of national governments. Sasha Issenberg's acclaimed books, The Sushi Economy and The Victory Lab, were early in identifying changes in the way the world works. A brilliant journalist with a keen eye for significant trends, he now turns his talents to medical tourism, and gives us a funny, vivid, wise narrative that will change the way you think about health care.
About the Author
Sasha Issenberg is the author of
The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns (2012) and
The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (2007). He is the Washington correspondent for
Monocle and a contributor to Bloomberg Politics. He covered the 2008 election as a national political correspondent for
The Boston Globe and the 2012 election as a columnist for
Slate. His work has also appeared in
The New Republic,
The New York Times Magazine, and
George, where he was a contributing editor. He is currently a resident scholar in the UCLA Department of Political Science and lives in Los Angeles.