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”.
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
The exchange rate just gives you their “top tier” experience.
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.
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.
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.
I have yet to meet anyone in healthcare that will admit those kinds of fees are wrong.
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.
$250.
Could do the Same in Syria for 200$
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.
Millenials are destroying the American healthcare invdustry by dropping dead before they’d see a doctor. TRAITORS
It boggles the mind that anyone could defend our current medical system, let alone our dental system. Even with dental insurance, you’re lucky to get more than 50% covered for these type of procedures and there is an annual payout cap which even a root canal and crowns can hit. A single implants in the US will cost much more than this guy claims to have spent.
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.
“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
Same old, same old it seems.
That’s why Mamdani style “sewer socialism” is so important right now for breaking people out of it. We start with showing the country that we can fill pots holes, provide childcare, and reduce grocery prices, they will break out of their matrix pretty quickly.
Americans aren’t use to having a government that actually functions. But, because their expectations are so low the bar for changing their minds is also very low. We just have to win power to make enough people believe it’s actually possible. And once that happens, well, we’ll be able to make changes nationally one way or another.
This works great for pet care too… great veterinarians in TJ.
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.
And these people will do it to every country if not stopped.
And they are trying to bring that US system to Canada and the UK so maybe a dozen people or less cab make billions.
They’re trying to bring it to all “western” countries. The US ideology is being pushed hard everywhere in order for US firms to come in and start monetising everything (among which, health, of course).
That’s roughly 23k MXN, which is also what some people here earn in an entire month. Just trying to clarify that while it’s certainly not as expensive as it is in the US compared to the average person’s salary, it’s still not as cheap for people who actually live here either
plenty of people in the US live off that same amount
And plenty of Mexicans live with less than half that. My comment was never meant to be a competition to begin with
That’s helpful context. So all that for about 1 months salary in Mexico. Meanwhile the USA estimate was multiple months salary. Looks like about 4-5 months for the average American.
US minimum wage $7.25 x 160 hours = $1160.
I mean, if we’re going off of minimum wage, then the MX numbers are also incredibly lower.
Around 13k on the northern border states, around 10k the rest, both monthly. That’s roughly 750 and 550 USD respectively.
And that’s assuming the job is respecting the law.
Sure, but 21,000 usd as he was quoted is closer to the average annual salary in America. So it’s still disgustingly more affordable for a local Mexican to afford their own dental care.
Not to undermine your point, dental services are still kinda expensive for regular people, but this is also Tijuana, a border city where stuff is more expensive.
And that dental clinic probably inflates their prices since they provably service a number of foreigners.
I’m aware, but if I started talking about that I would’ve ended with an entire wall of text, and I didn’t feel like doing that
Still, thanks for providing additional context
Guess what, that’s also roughly a months salary for some people in the US too. Not only do we have shitty healthcare but we also have shit wages.
certainly not as expensive as it is in the US
I’m aware. This was never intended to be a post bashing Americans, but just to provide further context on the economy of the place oop went to get their dental stuff done
I’m aware that even tho that’s still expensive for Mexicans, it’s more expensive for Americans to stay there. I just didn’t vibe with the whole “guys it’s way cheaper in Mexico” undertone
Walking into a hospital in America is a month of work for me before they even do anything and i make good money for an American.
Yeah that’s what I expected. Yes we’re being fleeced in America, but also low cost of living, lower wages, and cheaper education can all drastically reduce the price of dentistry
Why tf is he talking AI
Hate to break it to you, but humans have been using the em-dash since before AI existed. AI output is modeled after effective communicators, and those people still exist.
“Our healthcare system isnt broken. Its a business model” If anything the em dash in that second sentence makes it seem more human, because its a double “it’s not this – it’s that”-ism. I don’t care if the text is AI written or not but that style of communicating is not normal – its AI.
It’s entirely normal. It’s been a common rhetorical device for centuries. It may be more common now due to AI, but language is memetic and people adopt popular styles. It’s impossible to say whether this is AI or not.
To be clear, I am more anti-AI than most people, but AI-hunts like this are only a waste of time. And frankly, they only distract from the message, which in this case is more worthy of discussion than whether or not the messenger used AI to compose his message.
I hate that everyone thinks an em dash is the mark of the beast. I’ve been using it for as long as I can remember, but people at work will give me shit saying that I am using an AI to respond.
I can even make it on my keyboard — because I use a proper keyboard map on a decent system. And I could do it ten years ago too!
I’m pretty sure we’re reading an ad for a Tijuana based gastric bypass doctor lol.
There should be a distinction between posts written by humans, and those written by AI. Political discussions should be for humans, not robots.
If this person wanted to make a comparison between dental prices, they could’ve written it out themselves. But instead the relied on an AI. That’s not innovation, that’s laziness!
Today, online discussions are broken – you can’t know which comments are written by humans any more. Luckily we have people like you who can tell the difference.
Disclaimer: This post was written by a human.
Yeah, I don’t know; is it even true, then?
Idk if his specific post is true, but medical tourism is a booming industry. So common in the US that even the CDC has a page on it https://www.cdc.gov/yellow-book/hcp/health-care-abroad/medical-tourism.html
Seems rather to be the LinkedIn style, with barely more than a short sentence per paragraph, and infused with the unmistakable pathos that feels a bit reserved but is definitely too pompous for business talk.
The formatting is similar to the BBC style aka modern news sites, but idk why it got adopted on LinkedIn when posters are presumably not paid per ad impression.
I live in a country on which USians love to shit online, and had root canal procedures and fillings done for free. Not sure about implants, though.
USians shit on lots of countries, you’re going to have to narrow it down
Fuck them. Let 'em keep guessing.
They’ll never get it cuz they don’t know any countries. Source: am USian
Surprisingly, yall seem to learn a bit of geography every time you find another country to belittle. However, you’ll never do any damage that my homeland’s rich and deep folklore hasn’t already done, what with being familiar with all the issues from the inside.
