Ormond Meghann
Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Asia Pac Viewp. 2011;52(3):247-59. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2011.01457.x.
"Medical tourism" has frequently been held to unsettle naturalised relationships between the state and its citizenry. Yet in casting "medical tourism" as either an outside "innovation" or "invasion," scholars have often ignored the role that the neoliberal retrenchment of social welfare structures has played in shaping the domestic health-care systems of the "developing" countries recognised as international medical travel destinations. While there is little doubt that "medical tourism" impacts destinations' health-care systems, it remains essential to contextualise them. This paper offers a reading of the emergence of "medical tourism" from within the context of ongoing health-care privatisation reform in one of today's most prominent destinations: Malaysia. It argues that "medical tourism" to Malaysia has been mobilised politically both to advance domestic health-care reform and to cast off the country's "underdeveloped" image not only among foreign patient-consumers but also among its own nationals, who are themselves increasingly envisioned by the Malaysian state as prospective health-care consumers.
“医疗旅游”常被认为会扰乱国家与其公民之间的固有关系。然而，学者们在将“医疗旅游”视为外部“创新”或“入侵”时，往往忽视了社会福利结构的新自由主义紧缩在塑造被视为国际医疗旅游目的地的“发展中”国家国内医疗体系方面所起的作用。虽然“医疗旅游”对目的地的医疗体系产生影响几乎毋庸置疑，但将其置于具体情境中仍至关重要。本文从当今最著名的目的地之一马来西亚正在进行的医疗保健私有化改革的背景出发，解读“医疗旅游”的兴起。文章认为，到马来西亚的“医疗旅游”在政治上被调动起来，既推动了国内医疗改革，又摆脱了该国在外国患者消费者以及本国国民眼中的“不发达”形象，而马来西亚政府也日益将本国国民视为潜在的医疗保健消费者。
