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... (3/9/2007 update)

• I love National Public Radio, and so was thrilled to be invited to be on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan yesterday. We discussed my original trip to Costa Rica, how I came to write "Beauty from Afar," various medical destinations and pros and cons of going abroad for medical care, plastic surgery and dentistry.
  
  Also on the air were Patrick Marsek, managing director for MedRetreat, a medical tourism company, and Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health. Helen seemed rather dubious about the prospects of health care overseas ever becoming something that U.S. insurers and businesses will embrace. She cleaarly doesn't talk to the same people I do. "We'll see."
  
  Here's the link at NPR:
  
  Medical Tourism and the Costs of Traveling for Care
  
  or the permalink is:
  
  http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2007/03/outsourcing_surgery.html

• KPCC Public Radio in southern California did an excellent half-hour show today on "Traveling for Treatment" and I was happy to take part in the conversation. The producers and the host, Patt Morrison, had definitely done their homework. Besides me, they featured a patient who had recently returned from having hip resurfacing surgery in India; and the president of the international hospital accrediting organization JCI. Streaming audio is available on Ms. Morrison's page or I have the mp3 file of the segment available here.

• I was privileged to be a guest recently on Travel Today Radio with Peter Greenberg and we ended up chatting about my favorite subjects with each other and listeners for almost 25 minutes. I've referred to Peter as the "King of All Travel Media," which would probably embarrass him if he knew, or will when he finds out, since he seems like the sort of person who might still get a little abashed about his own success. You can listen to the interview here. Peter is best known, perhaps, as Travel Editor for the Today Show and for his "Travel Detective" persona and books. But he seems to be everywhere, at least if you're me. ;-)
• ABC Business News did a long segment on Medical Tourism on Aug. 29 and I was on for about half of it, talking with anchor Ryan Owens about Beauty from Afar as though it was the most natural thing in the world, which it wasn't, really. But ABC archives the video and you can see for yourself how I did. Mark Repasky of ABC did a nice companion piece for the video, headlined A Cut Below: Americans Look Abroad for Health Care, in which I was quoted a few times.
• I was in Costa Rica from Aug. 14 to 24, visiting with friends and promoting the book. Though no publisher has yet bought the rights to sell Beauty from Afar abroad, there is of course substantial interest in the book among people in the countries about which I wrote. I really didn't bring enough copies with me. I'm grateful, as always to my dentists, Josef Cordero and Telma Rubinstein of Prisma Dental, for their kindness and support. They have opened many doors for me which might have remained closed without their introduction. I of course had my annual dental checkup while there; Telma wants to put braces on my lower teeth but that will have to wait until I can afford the time to stay for a few weeks. I also saw Dr. Bernardo Rubinstein, Telma's brother and an opthalmologist of note, about the possibility of having Lasik (tm) to correct my vision. But for now, on his advice, I am sticking with reading glasses ...