My mother had to have some dental work done. Her dentist told her it would cost $3,000. With that money she and my dad traveled to Greece, stayed for 4 months and had the procedure done there with much better results. They also traveled to Greece two years ago for my dads cataract operation. The operation didn't cost them anything and here it would have been $10,000 out of pocket. We are all still Greek citizens and have access to free medical care.

Somewhat surprisingly, it can work the other way round too. Here in the UK we have one of the best healthcare systems in the world, the NHS, in which any British citizen, regardless of how rich or poor they are, receives world-class medical treatment funded by National Insurance (a small percentage of our income) rather than receiving a huge bill afterwards. Unfortunately, successive governments have failed to provide the funding this system requires in order to be able to operate effectively and so patients have to wait a long time for surgery that isn't required immediately to save their life.

This has led to a situation in which some people who can afford it will travel to the USA and pay to have surgery carried out immediately. In some ways that's great for our health service because the patient will have been paying National Insurance anyway and if the surgery costs, say, £100,000, paying to have it done in the USA saves the NHS £100,000 which can then be used to treat people who can't afford to pay. On the other hand, it's not so great for the USA because in a profit-driven system they'll get preferential treatment over someone who can't pay as much and that person is going to have to suffer for longer as a result.

There was an interesting case in the news yesterday in which a woman who needed surgery to correct a default in her spine had gone to the USA but was then denied surgery when her payment of £250,000 was declined at the hospital - her bank had flagged it up as potentially fraudulent and blocked it.

I had a brief contact with a US trained nurse that works with a bariatric medical group in Mexico and shepherds people through the process of getting their surgery down there.

"Medical tourism" is not new. The industry has been growing for at least the last 30 years.
I became aware of it back in the 80s, when I started hearing about people going
outside the country for relatively simple procedures that were too cost-prohibitive here. It was mostly for plastic surgery procedures, but there were also other surgeries not related to plastic surgery.
Yes, there are have been a few cases of things going horribly wrong, but that percentage is pretty low considering the number of procedures which are completed successfully.
One of the things one must research before committing to having any procedure,
anywhere, is where the doctor(s) involved, received their training.
A lot of doctors, who practice abroad, received their medical training in the US.

As an aside, people seeking medical procedures out of country has been quiet, but common, for a really long time. Wealthy families, especially politically-connected ones, have sent their wives, daughters, and mistresses, out of the country for abortion procedures for decades.

It's just like anything else. Caveat emptor.

People have been traveling to Cuba also to take advantage of the Free health care system which is available to everyone. They have excellent hospitals.

How do you measure quality vs cost? There are stories of messed up procedures...