As health care becomes ever more expensive, Americans are increasingly traveling abroad in search of cheaper medical treatment. One industry study estimated the market for such “medical tourism” at $111 billion in 2026.
Some economists have been enthusiastic about medical tourism’s potential to disrupt overpriced arrangements. In a widely cited line from 2006, Princeton’s Uwe Reinhardt suggested that offshoring of elective surgeries could do “to the U.S. health-care system what the Japanese auto industry did to American carmakers.”
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Sign up for our free newsletter today.
Yet patients prefer to receive treatment close to home, and insurers are required to pay for that. Any attempt to loosen this obligation would be hugely unpopular—even if it did generate savings. Medical tourism therefore is likely to remain restricted to elements of health care beyond the scope of insurance, such as cosmetic surgery or dental care for uninsured residents of border communities.
It’s not surprising that some might see medical tourism as increasingly appealing. The cost of major procedures often dwarfs that of international travel. Technology is also making it easier to arrange treatment across borders, enabling patients to identify quality providers, make bookings, share diagnostics, and coordinate follow-up care.
Over the past year, various TikTok clips have championed overseas travel for medical services. Many feature gleaming facilities in Turkey and advertise the opportunity to combine tourism with health care that costs a fraction of what it would in the United States. USA Today notes that Turkey “has become a destination where world class medical care meets the comfort and pace of a restorative getaway.”
The strategy—and the Turkish government has made the expansion of medical tourism a strategic priority—appears to be working. From 2022 to 2024, the number of foreign patients in Turkey surged from 1.4 million to 2 million.
Turkey is not alone. Up to 3 million Americans every year go to Mexico for health care, where surgical procedures cost 50 percent to 80 percent less than in the United States, largely because of differences in labor costs. In 2023, family physicians in the U.S. earned an average of $247,790, while those in Mexico were paid only $49,000 after adjusting for differences in the cost of living.
A 2008 study of Texas border county residents found that 49 percent had crossed the Rio Grande to buy prescription drugs, while 41 percent had done so to obtain dental care. Cost differences again are the primary motivator: Mexican prices for branded prescription drugs average 73 percent less than in the United States. To treat yanquis, Los Algodones in Baja California (across the border from Yuma, Arizona) hosts the highest concentration of dentists in the world: more than 1,000 in a town with only 5,500 residents.
Do these cases augur the transformation Reinhardt contemplated? Probably not.
Outliers notwithstanding, medical tourism remains a marginal phenomenon. Only 0.6 percent of Americans traveled internationally for preplanned medical care in 2015—55 percent of them for dentistry. (The question is not regularly surveyed.)
The reasons why show the limits of medical tourism. Emergency medical conditions clearly need to be treated close to home, and travel for major surgery is often a bad idea, due to the risk of blood clots and other complications. Even if the quality of care is satisfactory, patients going abroad for treatment may be exposed to substantial unanticipated costs if procedures prove more complex than anticipated.
And this underscores the importance of insurance coverage to the purchase of health care. Despite big price differences across the United States, most patients greatly prefer to be treated close to home. As over 97 percent of hospital costs are paid for either by insurers or the government, patients have little need to travel further afield in search of savings—even domestically. Even if patients want to be treated overseas, insurance generally doesn’t cover scheduled medical procedures abroad.
Travel for medical care is therefore most common for services uncovered by insurance. Cosmetic procedures such as hair transplants, breast implants, nose jobs, and dental makeovers account for much of Turkey’s medical tourism boom. Medical tourism also involves substantial travel by wealthy residents of countries with publicly financed health-insurance systems who pay cash to avoid the rationing of surgical procedures.
Could American insurers begin steering patients overseas for cheaper treatment? The law currently prohibits them from doing so. And any change would surely be hugely unpopular, because patients won’t want to be forced to travel when they are seriously ill.
Policymakers have no easy options for cutting the cost of health care in the United States. But while U.S. health-insurance costs continue to rise and TikTok videos make medical tourism seem attractive, Americans are unlikely to go abroad for the bulk of health-care services any time soon.
Photo by Cemal Yurttas/Anadolu via Getty Images