Jumping the queue? How a focus on health tourism as benefit fraud misses much of the medical tourism story

Abstract

This chapter analyses ‘health tourism’ as a specific form of alleged benefit fraud. Medical tourism takes place when individuals opt to travel overseas with the primary intention of receiving medical treatment. As such, it can be thought of as a type of patient or ‘consumer’ mobility in which individuals travel outside their country of residence for the consumption of health care services. More recently, media coverage of medical tourism has adopted the narrative of benefit fraud or exploitation, with tourists either purposely or unwittingly accessing care they are not entitled to or not paying for that which they are required to pay. This issue has proven particularly incendiary, prompting formal responses from the government. In the lead up to and aftermath of the UK's EU referendum, the issue played a central role in wider discussions around migration and the free movement of individuals across Europe.