Tuesday Morning With Justin: Healthcare, Leadership & Life
Tuesday Morning With Justin: Healthcare, Leadership & Life
Medical Tourism: A Global Health Cost Comparison
Could you get the same medical procedure for less than half the price by boarding a plane? For millions of Americans facing staggering healthcare costs, medical tourism has become more than just a curiosity – it's becoming a financial necessity.
The story of 28-year-old Brianna Williams highlights this growing trend perfectly. Despite having comprehensive employer-provided health insurance, she discovered her IVF treatments would cost approximately $25,000 out-of-pocket in the United States. Her solution? Traveling to Mexico, where the same procedures cost just $7,500 – a 70% savings that made starting her family financially possible without taking on massive debt.
This isn't just happening with fertility treatments. Dental work shows some of the most dramatic differences – veneers costing $9,600 in the US are available for $2,500 in Mexico, while Europeans flock to Hungary for dental work at 75-85% savings. Even major surgeries like hip replacements ($40,000 in the US vs. $8,700 in Turkey) and gastric bypass ($23,000 in the US vs. $7,800 in Mexico) demonstrate why medical tourism is booming.
Safety remains the primary concern, which is why patients are advised to seek facilities accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI). With over 1,000 JCI-accredited hospitals worldwide, patients can find quality care that meets international standards while saving thousands. Looking ahead, we're also seeing US doctors abandoning insurance altogether for cash-pay models, potentially creating domestic alternatives that offer similar savings without international travel.
Have you considered medical tourism for a procedure? Share your thoughts or questions about finding affordable healthcare alternatives in today's challenging insurance landscape.
Music by Alex Lambert.
Contact Justin via text 740-525-5259 or via email JFutrell@TrueNorthCompanies.com
I welcome the opportunity to hear your feedback from this episode!
Thanks again to my musically gifted friend Alex Lambert for the music. Also thanks to Kevin Asehan for the edits.
Welcome to another Tuesday morning with Justin. I'm Justin Futrell, benefit Advisor at True North Companies, and today I'm going to ask no, I'm not going to ask a question. A listener asked a question, so I'm going to expand on their question, and that was hey, justin, I heard about medical tourism and people flying to different countries to get stuff done. What do you know about that? I was looking through the articles I try to save all kinds of articles that I think might be relevant at some point and I found an article from Kiplinger's personal finance magazine last year, in 2024. And it was an article on this young woman named Brianna Williams, 28 years old, and she had comprehensive healthcare coverage through her work, but when she started looking into fertility treatments to start a family, she was floored by the out-of-pocket costs, specifically of getting three rounds of in vitro fertilization treatment IVF, as a lot of people know it by which, as we all can appreciate, is becoming more and more common and talked about. So the bottom line is if she doesn't want to, what options does she have? Maybe we should ask that? I think three things come to mind. One well, she could not start a family. That's not ideal. Obviously she wants to. The second that she shared was well, I could get a second mortgage, also not financially ideal. And the third thing is find a better solution. Well, well, it turns out that what she was looking at in the us out of pocket was around twenty five thousand dollars and the the ivf treatment in mexico was seventy five hundred dollars after all three of those treatments.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to give some other examples, because I think it's really interesting thinking about traveling somewhere to take care of something, but I want to first say the importance of care See if there are infections and other complications known here. Most importantly, you want to stick with an accredited facility, one that is reputable, affordable, not necessarily the cheapest if it's not good quality. You are able to look for hospitals that are accredited by the Joint Commission, international, jci, and there are well over a thousand accredited JCI hospitals in the world, which candidly creates a really cool opportunity to go on vacation and get something taken care of. Now, it's not always something so major, right, it could be something like your teeth. Here's an example in Mexico Dental veneers. Well, in the US it would have cost $9,600 for a full set of veneers, but it was $2,500 for a full set in Mexico.
Speaker 1:What else? Hungary, hungary. I knew there was a reason I did that third grade project on Hungary when I could choose any country in the world to learn about when it comes to dental tourism. What Mexico is for us in the United States, it's Hungary for Europeans. So an example a crown can be anywhere from $1,400 in the US. Well, that's $210, $400 at the maximum per tooth in Hungary. So incredible difference of almost $1,000 per crown. Okay, what else? Cosmetic surgery, of course Thailand is really well known for that.
Speaker 1:I want to give three last examples. The first is just kind of fun funny Teeth whitening. The average teeth whitening cost is $650 in the US. It's 190 bucks in Costa Rica. I'm doing the math and I think you'd get a round trip ticket and explore Costa Rica a little bit for the same price.
Speaker 1:Now, more importantly and more seriousness, the big ticket items Gastric bypass. The US cost on average is $23,000. What do you think that cost is in Mexico? $7,800. That's a difference. I mean, that's a third of the cost.
Speaker 1:What about a hip replacement? What's the cost in the US? We just talked about a knee replacement being, on average, $30,000, probably a little higher now. $40,000 is the US average for a hip replacement. Well, you could go to Costa Rica it's $13,000 to an accredited JCI hospital. You could go to Mexico and it's even cheaper at $11,000. Or you could even go to Turkey and it's $8,700. For the same exact hip replacement, it's $40,000 in the US.
Speaker 1:I just want to say thank you. I wanted to share those examples and the trivia like that, because we got great feedback from a listener a couple of weeks ago. Medical tourism it looks like it is happening and not going away. And at the same time, I believe that there are going to be doctors and dentists who are sick of dealing with insurance in the United States, dentists who are sick of dealing with insurance in the United States, and they're going to start requiring cash pay only. They're going to say, hey, I'm not going to deal with insurance, I'm just going to tell you the cost of the surgery. Take it or leave it. This is a major opportunity for employers to partner with these kinds of doctors and dentists in the US, because it can accomplish a big chunk of the same goal without having to fly out of country. All right, gang, keep bringing those good questions.
