1.2M Americans visit Mexico for ‘medical tourism’ each year

Last week’s fatal abduction of Americans who had ventured to Matamoros, Mexico, to chaperone their friend getting tummy tuck there underscored the booming business of medical tourism south of the border.

Some 1.2 US residents travel to Mexico annually to undergo elective surgery at a discount, according to Medical Tourism Mexico, which advertises that patients can save up to 80% on a comparable procedure in the US.

That figure — which represents more than a third of a percent of the US population — was repeated by Josef Woodman, CEO of Patients Beyond Borders.

“Pre-pandemic, some 1.2 million American citizens traveled to Mexico for elective medical treatment,” Woodman told NPR Wednesday.

“Today, the market is recovering rapidly in Mexico, nearly back to its pre-pandemic levels,” Woodman reportedly said.

Medical Tourism Mexico boasts that the country has “one of the strongest economies in Latin America” and says its doctors “have the knowledge, education, expertise and infrastructure to provide services with top quality.”

However, the US Department of State advises against traveling to six Mexican states due to concerns over “crime and kidnapping.”

One of those states, Tamaulipas, is where Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown were killed after they were kidnapped along with two fellow Americans in a broad daylight cartel shootout that was caught on camera.

The state department also advises Americans to “reconsider” travel to seven other states, including Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua, which also border the US.

US citizens are warned to use “increased caution” when traveling to 17 other locales in Mexico, including the international destination of Mexico City and the state of Quintana Roo, home of Caribbean resort destinations like Cancún.

In only two of Mexico’s 31 states — Campeche and Yucatan on the Gulf of Mexico — can Americans expect to use “normal precautions” while traveling, the feds say.

Some border towns — like Matamoros — are top destinations for medical tourism due to their ease of access, even though they are often hotbeds of cartel violence.

In Tijuana, a 33-story medical facility opened last fall, billing itself as “the best medical tourism facility in the world,” and a “One Stop Shop” experience, just a stone’s throw from San Diego.

Despite the safety risks involved, many also traveled to Mexico to get dental and orthopedic work done on the cheap or buy prescription drugs at a discount.

“North American patients travel to Mexico for care primarily to save 50-70% over what they would pay in the United States for an elective treatment,” Woodman reportedly said.

The safety risks are not just confined to a medical tourist’s stay south of the border, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Flying in a pressurized plane cabin can cause complications in the aftermath of surgery, and the odds of “acquiring antibiotic-resistant infections” may be increase, the agency warns.

“Medical tourists should also be aware that the drugs and medical products and devices used in foreign countries might not be subject to the same regulatory scrutiny and oversight as in the United States,” the CDC’s website reads.

Despite the warnings, more than 90% of a group of people crossing the border in California for medical services said they felt health care services in Mexico were the “same or better quality” compared to the US, and had no plans to stay home for procedures in the future.

The Journal of the American Pharmacists Association interviewed 427 medical tourists for a 2020 research paper. It found the average profile of the medical tourist was a 65-year-old who earned between $25,001 and $50,000 a year. The vast majority of them were motivated by saving money, the study found.

Mexico’s homicide rate is four times higher than the US at 28 per 100,000, but only 0.26 per 100,000 Americans who visited the country in 2021 were murdered, News Nation reported.

In that pandemic-plagued year — the last one in which complete statistics were available from the state department, 75 Americans were murdered in Mexico, accounting for a minuscule percentage of the 29 million who visited.

Despite high-profile cases of violence against Americans and warnings from Washington, DC, Mexico remains by far the most popular international destination for US citizens, drawing far more than twice as many visitors as Canada.

In 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, some 40 million Americans visited there, the government’s National Travel and Tourism Office said.