HEALTH CARE BARGAINS ABROAD

If you can't afford a medical procedure here, investigate options overseas.

- EMMA PATCH

Breana Williams, 28, of Fresno, Calif., has comprehensive health care coverage, but when she began looking into fertility treatments to start a family, she was floored by the out-of-pocket cost. So while some friends in her shoes started seeking a job at a U.S. company offering to offset or cover the cost of fertility care for their employees, and others took out second mortgages on their homes to cover the cost, Williams had another thought: Mexico.

Thus began Williams’s journey down and up the California coast to Tijuana, where she received three rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment for a fraction of the price quoted to her at home. The initial round cost $3,500 and $1,000 for medication, and each round after that was just $1,500 before the cost of medication. In the states, she was quoted roughly $20,000 for just one round. She is now taking a break from the mentally and physically taxing treatment, but on her latest trip to Mexico, she took advantage of inexpensive dental work.

Each year, millions of U.S. residents travel outside of the country for medical procedures that cost far less than what they’d pay in the U.S. And the medical tourism industry is bracing for a new surge of medical travelers in 2023 as healthcare costs in the U.S. continue to rise.

Medical tourism first took hold decades ago, when wealthy people, mostly women but also some men, began traveling for expensive cosmetic treatments. “Sixty, 70 years ago, the surgical techniques were not great, and it took a long time to recover,” says Josef Woodman, CEO of Patients Beyond Borders, a medical tourism consulting agency. “They would take safari trips and be gone for 30 days, and they’d have all kinds of face and breast and body work done,” he says.