As medical tourism grows in the US it is interesting which groups benefit the most and which groups are the most unsettled as a result. As the Harvard Business Review points medical tourism is a disruptive technology and will end up influencing elective healthcare in the USA. Whether the impact of this disruptive force is large or small will depend on the degree of adoption of medical tourism or medical travel by US consumers and businesses.
Consumers have now a choice about affordable elective surgery that insurance companies currently have little influence over. Any new system that gives customers an additional choice will be by its nature disruptive. Medical tourism is no different. The degree of adoption will however largely be dependent on how closely health consumers ‘buying decisions’ and medical tourism destinations ‘selling processes” align. Coupled with this is how closely the 
medical and cultural environment of health customer’s home country is mirrored in the destination to where the medical tourist is heading. American medical travelers who speak only English will be far more comfortable in a country whose environment is English speaking not just its doctors.
This notion of upsetting the current system is probably the reason health insurers in the USA have been slow to adopt medical tourism programs. To adopt them is unsettling for insurers. The cost savings seem very attractive but how does one actually implement and integrate such an option into a plan? This is even more difficult if the insurers themselves are not prepared to travel to the medical tourist destination and see for themselves how much of a foreign experience the trip would be for one of their customers.
However the insurers are somewhat missing the point by not at least considering medical tourism as an option: the early adopters will have an advantage over the late comers as first mover advantage in this market confers significant benefits into terms of capacity, cost realization, learnings and subsequent innovation gleaned from being involved in other medical systems that may be able to teach the US about healthcare provision.
