The growth of medical and dental tourism in modern society is worthy of socioeconomic research, which is precisely what investigative journalist Sasha Issenberg has accomplished in a new book.

When it comes to dental tourism, Costa Rica is the darling of the Americas. In Europe, Costa Rica’s counterpart nation is the Republic of Hungary, where dental tourists from across Western Europe flock to get dental treatments done at a fraction of the price.

Outpatients: The Astonishing New World of Medical Tourism, is reviewed in a January article published on The New Republic. Adam Gaffney explains that Issenberg mostly tackles Hungary and Bulgaria in his book, but medical tourism is something that extends well beyond Europe.

One interesting point raised by Gaffney is eloquently written by Issenberg. In the early post-Communist era, Hungary rose as a dental tourism destination that mostly attracted patients who sought Hollywood-style dental treatments; as such, even though European patients were realizing substantial savings, they still spent considerably more than average families could normally afford. Such is no longer case: “[T]he bulk of medical tourism today, [is] not undertaken as an act of privilege.”

Rising health care costs are certainly at the heart of medical and dental tourism; nonetheless, it is interesting to learn about how these costs got so high in the first place. First of all, healthcare policies in certain nations such as the United States made it easy for a “medical-industrial complex” to arise unchecked. The corporate health care industry seeks to profit from a $5 trillion annual market; it just so happens that this is an industry that can operate at will in the U.S. and other nations.

In the former Eastern Bloc, healthcare suffered under the medical-industrial complex as well, but systemic corruption made it worse. Once medical and dental professionals were able to operate privately, they set their own prices, worried about their individual prestige and began attracting tourists.

In Costa Rica, a nation where healthcare is accessible and affordable, medical professionals have more freedom in terms of specialization, continuous education and establishing their practices. Clinics such as the New Smile Dental Group, located in San Jose, are able to cater to dental tourists because their overhead expenses are reasonable enough to allow them to offer certain extras such as: lavish patient lounges, their own dental laboratories, CAD/CAM technologies, travel arrangements, and more.