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Medical tourism is nothing new. People have been seeking more affordable, sometimes higher-quality care for as long as humans could cross borders. In today’s world that usually means travel to foreign countries for a wide range of medical procedures from elective surgeries like liposuction and rhinoplasty to advanced care for complex medical conditions like cancer and fertility treatments. And it’s a multibillion dollar market that continues to grow with globalization.

There are as many alternative medical offerings as there are destinations in the world – giving people countless reasons to seek medical care away from home.

These often include pursuing more affordable treatment options to accessing specialized medical expertise that is not …

This is a question that can be answered empirically but doing so is challenging. While cross-country comparisons are feasible for comparing public and private health care provisions, often there are many other differences between health care systems across country. Within any given country, there is significant selection bias in terms of who receives public vs. private care. Moreover, most research focuses on public vs. private financing of health care (e.g., Medicare Advantage vs. Medicare FFS), but less so whether the providers are public employees or not.

To answer this question, a paper by Frakes, Gruber, and Justicz (2023) examines data on obstetrical care within the Military Health System (MHS) using Military Health System Data Repository data. The authors summarize MHS as follows: …