ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns legal and ethical issues related to medical tourism for services that are legal in the patient's home and the destination country. It covers the issues faced by three populations of medical tourists engaged in it: patients paying out of pocket, private insurer prompted and government prompted medical tourists. Medical tourism is the travel of patients from their home country to a foreign country for the primary purpose of receiving health care services. In Europe, where much of trade is within the European Union (EU) and home countries have public insurance programmes, the main issues are the legality of prior authorisation schemes and the regulation of reimbursement rates. The EU Directive recognises that the Member State of Affiliation may provide for a system of prior authorisation', but in accord with the prior European Court of Justice case law it recognises that such a prior authorisation system can serve as a barrier to the freedom to provide medical services.
