That's your entire economy after new markets gets 'investment'.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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My dentist gave me a big estimate, and I said, "I'll never be able to afford that," and he said "Just go to Mexico, get it done for a quarter of the price."
I got dental implants in Costa Rica. One of the best medical systems in the world and flying there and back, hotel for ~10 days, rental car, and the two implants was cheaper than one implant from the sketchiest dentist I could find in the USA
Now I need 2 more and I’m considering going back. Wonderful country but driving there is a nightmare
Add 5% on the bill for chauffeur treatment.
The exchange rate just gives you their “top tier” experience.
Los Algodones, Mexico is a border town that's economy is based entirely around dental tourism. It has a population of 5,000 and has 600 dentists.
It's so funny the town is called "The Cottons". I imagine the cotton balls dentists use, haha.
Thank you, I was going to mention that too. "Molar City".
It isn’t a healthcare system; it’s a health extortion racket, at this point.
Something to be aware of when it comes to healthcare in the US: the entire industry is a huge money-making machine. It's not just the infamous insurance companies making a profit on people's health or lack of. It's pharmaceutical companies, medical supply companies, medical equipment companies, medical services companies (like software), and last but not least: medical professionals. Everyone making a profit at every level.
Take a look at this list of top 25 highest paid occupations in the US and weep. Summary: 23 of the 25 highest paid occupations are medical professionals. The only ones that are not are chief executives and airline pilots, and those two aren't even in the top 10.
For the sake of another example, I know someone who was quoted $4,000 for some dental work in the US and went to their birth country to have the work done instead. The bill was $90. Granted, it was a dental training school so that probably made it extra cheap, but they said the quality of work was better than they were used to getting in the US. It's literally mind-boggling.
This article mentions a couple of other factors that go into the price in the US that I had forgotten about: expensive medical / dental schools and medical malpractice insurance.
part of why they are so highly paid is that malpractice can go after almost all of their assets and medical school/residency enrollment slots are federally capped.
blame the government for not having anti trust lawsuits against the medical equipment and for having caps on how many people can become doctors per year.
Probably should give you all a warning about traveling for medical work
1: You will not have access to the same level of after care when you get home. There may also be incompatible medication and procedures to your home country.
2: If something goes wrong you will need to deal with it out there. It may be cheeper for the procedure but you will not have the same resources to emergency or long term care. The cost of repatriation is astronomical compared to the cost of local care.
3: When you get back a local doctor or dentists is not going to touch this as this is someone else's issue and they don't want the liability of something more going wrong. You may need to then find more specialist care and more expensive work to fix what was broken.
4: Good luck getting any compensation. Different country means different legal system. You would need more legal resources to sue a foreign medical provider. Then would lose any savings you made as lawyers get there cut any a court is unlikely to pay out for the cost of what is to them excessive cost in a foreign country.
By all means get the work done but there is risks.
There is risk but you will still receive standard care if you got the initial care somewhere else. It’s just factually wrong that a medical professional, dentist or otherwise, is going to refuse work because somebody else did the initial work unless they’re a quak. It happens all the damn time.
Exactly. You're not looking for a contractor to fix the mess the last contractor left when you fired him for fucking up your driveway, this is the medical field. Doctors fix others doctors mistakes all the time. What are you supposed to do, go back to the quack who caused the problem, or get a new, competent one to fix the problem?
Maybe partly true both ways? Right now, we're going through doctors refusing to try procedures that may have been skipped along her way to pain management care. We're trying to see what we missed and consider all options, but when we bring up her history and "pain management" comes up (which can include medication and procedures), we've been turned away for the clear reason that they won't try to treat if these "pain management" procedures have already been done. But in other cases, they have said "why didn't they try steroid injection first, that would be the standard before a nerve block and ablation" and took the case anyway.
All that same stuff could happen with an American dentist, at 10x the price.
For dental work, you could fly back to the same doctor in Mexico multiple times for the cost of a US doc, even in the unlikely event you do have complications.
Hell, with these numbers, you could get 16 dentists, have them compete head to head in a 4-level tournament, and still afford an espresso machine for the winner.
And the idea that no doc will look at you after going overseas is fear mongering. I went to Argentina or facial feminization surgery (FFS) and Thailand for sex reassignment surgery (SRS.) This was long before insurance companies started getting forced to cover trans care under anti-discrimination laws. So I had to pay for everything out of pocket. The only hope for me to get treatment was to go overseas.
And I've had plenty of follow-up treatment in the states over the years. I had some complications from FFS and had to get some follow up treatment by a US doctor and dentist. And after SRS I've had regular gynecological care, including a pap smear. No doctor who treats trans patients has ever turned me away because I got treatment overseas.
Depends on how good your insurance is. OP is right, there's an added risk and if you have access to affordable dental care at home you should use it.
Dental insurance in the US is almost universally worthless if you need serious dental treatment. It's not real insurance. It's just a prepayment plan for basic services. Most plans have insultingly low annual limits like $1000 or $1500, when even a single implant will cost many multiples of this.
There are a few rare folks that have some gold plated dental coverage. But the default assumption should be that every American is effectively uninsured when it comes to dental insurance. We don't actually have dental insurance in the US, as a general rule.
Good point, I'd forgotten about annual limits.
Honestly, dental insurance as as government single-payer system makes even more sense than regular health insurance as a single-payer system.
The real problem with dental insurance is that most dental procedures can be put off for a long time. People can go years with rotted falling out teeth. Foregoing dental work can cause you a lot of pain, but it's unlikely to actually kill you. This is much less the case with regular health insurance. If you get a cancer diagnosis, you need treatment now. You can't wait five years, save on the premiums, and then sign up for a plan for a single year and get all your cancer treatments done at once. With dentistry you can. This is why dental insurance tends to have annual maximums. Without them, people could forego dental insurance for years, wait until they have a whole bunch of dental work that needs doing, and then only pay for a dental plan long enough to get those treatments covered.
But with a single-payer dental system, that adverse selection problem disappears. With single payer, everyone has to pay for dental insurance every year via taxes. There's no saving up dental work for one expensive year once a decade.
Simply due to the nature of dental care, it's very difficult to make private insurance work as true insurance in the dental market.
Could do the Same in Syria for 200$
Yup, my aunt and uncle are traveling out of the country for the first time in their lives. My uncle had may have had a few too many Irish pub beers (drinks only Coors) and ended up falling on some stairs and needed 14 staples in his head and a ride in the ambulance.
$250.
Had some leg problems and went to a specialist. Not an emergency, but it was recommended by my doctor.
The virtual call (yes I know) cost $400.
Then the scans cost $1800.
Finally, the procedure cost $7200.
Nearly $10k. And insurance only paid for 2/3 of it. The virtual call was a 30-min call where they repeat everything I answered on the form.
Years ago I worked out the math for a doctor to rent all his own equipment ( including MRI! ), pay for full time staff including accountants etc. and the money still didn't add up.
If doctors actually were paid $1,000/hr for their time, I'd understand because at least they are doing the labor. But that's not what is happening. Insurance companies are taking the profit.
This is by design. The massive amount of unpaid medical debt makes this necessary. We are all paying for the healthcare of people who can't afford it PLUS the profits going to the insurance industry and the debt collectors. That is why it is so stupid that people refuse to do Medicare for All or something similar.
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This works great for pet care too.. great veterinarians in TJ.
So...
Bit of a funny elephant here....
Hum...
When can we start using the same rhetoric towards Americans as they're having towards Mexicans? Or the nationalists/fascists/racists have towards immigrants in general?
I mean, if we're going to see an influx of Americans going to other countries to benefit of the things which are better outside of America.... Isn't that literally the whole argument anti-immigration people have?
I dunno. The irony kinda has me smiling like The Senate at an opera light show.
Oh the irony (and hypocrisy) is fucking thick, my guy.
My MAGA father-in-law wants to end abortion rights for all Americans in all cases. But when confronted by my wife that her and the rest of his 4 daughters might find their life in danger from an Ectopic pregnancy or other dangerous medical condition in which the only remedy is terminating a pregnancy, he calmly assured her that if they needed an abortion he'd fly them out of the country to get them one (but also the American Healthcare System is still the best in the world, btw). Meanwhile, he and those like him disparage those moving the US seeking opportunities and safety for their families instead of staying fixing their country that WE largely are responsible for destabilizing and putting into poverty.
And he doesn't put stock in us being held responsible for the state of those nations as the things we did to them happened decades ago (for the most part). Also he doesn't believe that Native Americans should have any claim to lands within the US or any sovereignty under US law. In unrelated matters, though, Isreal has a right to those lands because they were stolen from them thousands of years ago, and they can and should have a one state rule over the region and people there despite other people living there already, and also it is totally cool that they get put under a decades long blockade because those people voted a group into power that opposed their occupation, and they do not have a right to resist this blockade or occupation in an way with force.
If you are looking for consistent, thoughtful policy positions, I'm afraid the modern American Right has little to provide you.
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We're not the product. We're the cows getting milked dry, and once they have taken everything they can from us, we're discarded without a second thought.
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The propaganda is so bad that there are a non negligible amount of people that read this story and their first thought will be to blame this person for being a "traitor to America" for not supporting our economy by paying for overpriced healthcare, or because they don't have a good enough job to provide insurance.
There are working class people out there with the boot so far down their throat they will get angry at anyone pointing to how ridiculous of a world we live in.
It's like our entire culture in America is just filled with sunk cost fallacy and the false belief that as soon as we make things better that that will be right after THEY just became a billionaire.
Everyone is so tired and exhausted from overworking and getting nothing in return that the only dream they have is of being in the position of their boss one day and get to be the dickhead that fucks everyone else over.
We literally can't even imagine very basic things that most of the world enjoys.
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And they are trying to bring that US system to Canada and the UK so maybe a dozen people or less cab make billions.
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