The medical tourism industry must respond to the problems found in surrogacy tourism. The first is the need for medical tourism companies, brokers, clinics and even hospitals to hold patient funds in escrow. Abuse of patient trust by misappropriating funds should no longer be an issue.
For those in the medical tourism industry, the issue of "surrogacy tourism" or commercial surrogacy is not an issue of morality. Whatever one believes, there is a need for surrogacy services and people will take chances with the law in order to have children.
Those who in recent years built their dreams of prosperity and success on creating piles of profit from medical tourist dollars may today be wondering if their visions of high patient numbers and easy profits will ever materialize.
How many medical tourists are there? Is the answer the millions predicted by consulting firms like McKinsey or Deloitte, or is it the handful reported by insurance companies like Wellpoint and Aetna?
A number of forecasts on worldwide gross medical tourism revenue have been put forward by analysts (McKinsey, Deloitte), interested parties (hospitals), trade show promoters and academics.