Virtual Communities and Markets

Virtual Communities and Markets

After the IVF Vacation experience, I cannot understand why anyone would opt to pay $30,000 plus dollars for the U.S.A. IVF donor option when they will receive the same level of medical support in the Czech Republic plus have a wonderful vacation for less than half the cost of the U.S. IVF donor program! —Anonymous blog

As we have seen, lower-middle-class infertile couples are often angry and frustrated by the high-priced North American “baby business” and begin to question the medical care provided by doctors. Jenny, disillusioned by doctors’ greed and failure to care, turned to the Internet. She told me: “We decided there has to be some other option, somebody’s not telling us something. So [we] start Googling. Unfortunately for doctors in the U.S., we have the Internet now. So patients can take matters into their own hands. They used to be able to tell us whatever and we’d heed it. Now we don’t need to anymore. Now we can get our own information and do things for ourselves.” When a person like Jenny goes online seeking information related to a medical issue, she is embracing a neoliberal model of health care.1 This model includes the following elements: no government regulation or offering of public services, plus a freeing of borders and constraints to allow for the mobility of capital, people, and services on a global scale. This model of profit-driven health care has been exported around the world, whereby health is viewed as a commodity (Whittaker, Manderson, and Cartwright 2010:337). As described by Stone, “Global capitalism has meant an increasing linking of local, small-scale economies into a broader international economy dominated by multinational corporations. These corporations are oriented toward profits, economic growth, and the commoditization of more and more goods and services.