Medical tourism is the latest phase of a continuously expanding diversity of therapeutic places, from the biomedicine of Harley Street and the thousands of formal health care facilities, big and small, through landscapes and places of natural' and traditional' remedies to the expanding medical tourist destinations of Asia, Latin America and Central Europe. The incursions of capitalism and the commodification into hitherto personal and private experiences, from birth through to death, that are suggestive of a materialist, egoistical and self-absorbed society, are symptomatic of much of medical tourism, which has both stimulated and responded to such trends. The globalisation of the market for medical treatment parallels the now global market for skilled health care workers, the universal privatisation of health care and the emergence of global insurance companies. Hospital chains too are regional, analogous to older the TNCs and they are integrated with them.