Medical Tourism: General Tips

5/15/26, Author: Jeremy Smith

Below I'm going to give some medical tourism travel tips, and many related to Cancun specifically. Why are we doing this? Well, for starters, our goal is to help offer longevity tools and health improving hacks for the middle class, even the lower socio economic class (although almost no one is ever willing to call themselves this). It’s been said “the best thing you can do to improve healthspan and lifespan… is to not be poor.” This makes me sad, but to whatever degree this is true, I want to help provide workarounds. I think quality healthcare, good healthspan, and even a long lifespan should be for all.

As many of you may already clearly understand, the American medical system is built for the wealthy. What’s more, although we spend the most in the developed world, our health outcomes are among the worst. This means that we don’t even come close to getting what we pay for, and as a consumer we’re getting ripped off. Capitalism is supposed to fix this. We’re SUPPOSED to be able to vote with our dollar, until finally services rise to the value consumers demand. In America, however, we can’t really shop. Prices are not transparent or clearly displayed, and especially when we’re in emergency situations, we have to just accept whatever they want to charge. This is dysfunctional capitalism, if you can even call it capitalism.

Anyway, there has to be a way we can fight the vast, entrenched dysfunction of the American medical system. There is one way. We can vote with our feet. We can spend our dollar elsewhere. This might be small slow change, but large medical companies eventually do notice market changes, and make adjustments. This is just how capitalism works. Even if we don’t see change quickly, you can think of medical tourism as a protest. You’re saying “I vote with my dollar. I chose a different company, or even a different country’s system, to have this dollar instead of you.” Now, I want us all to save money, but I think you have to think bigger than that. International medical tourism is a protest movement. Eventually, if enough of us are involved, our politicians, lobby groups, and the medical companies themselves HAVE to listen. The “powers that be” can control many things, but they CANNOT control how you spend your money. Remember, each dollar spent is a vote!

Moving on, I’m going to tell you about the huge amount of money I saved on my last Cancun trip, and how you can do the same. I’ll go into greater detail later in the video, but I’ll give you a quick spoiler. On dentistry, my family saved $1771, which more than paid for the whole vacation. I also had hair grafts done, for $3000, which saved $10-15,000. You could easily pay well over $20,000 in America if you don’t shop. Anyway, when you’re saving tens of thousands, not only does that kind of saving really affect your own quality of life, but it also brings the base price of treatments down to a level even affordable to the lower/middle class.

Tip #1, The Where: So let’s jump right into how medical tourism works. It’s most useful for services that are not emergencies, and especially for elective services where you have a little bit of wait time. Some of the most notable places in the world for medical tourism, with really top notch quality and reputation, matching or exceeding the American medical system, is Thailand, Turkey, and Mexico, with South Korea, Columbia, India, Singapore, and China getting in the game in the past decade or more. Some of these destinations are 13+ hour flights, not counting the transfers and layovers, which are not only hard on your body, but also hard on your wallet. The long transit also makes it much more difficult to work into your schedule for quick getaways. For those of us living in America, however, Cancun and Tijuanna are very popular destinations. Cancun has long been a VERY affordable destination, comparable with Las Vegas for cheap flights, much cheaper than a lot of domestic destinations within America. Because of some schedule conflicts, I unfortunately had to book after the Iranian War started and prices skyrocketed. We paid almost $400 per person, but I was seeing flights around $200 before the war started. Flights this cheap even make many of the lower priced treatments worthwhile. Although we used several services, as I’d mentioned, even our $1771 dental treatments alone paid for the Caribbean vacation.

Tip #2, Big Things First: What I recommend though is first planning your trip around a bigger anchor treatment. You might have enough dental work that dentistry qualifies as a big thing, but other examples of bigger treatments are things like IVF, vision correcting treatments, plastic surgery, orthopedics, or bariatric surgeries for weight loss. Cancun offers so many different kinds of treatments, but these mentioned are some of the most popular with Americans and have very established medical tourism markets. Not only does planning the trip around the big thing first guarantee a certain amount of savings from the outset, and make your trip worthwhile, but it’s just a practical way to plan things in general. Most of us have seen the old example for planning and prioritizing. If you want to fit all the rocks in a jar, it works if you put the big ones in first, but not vice versa… This is not just a tip for medical tourism, it’s just a life hack for almost everything.

Tip #3, Use AI: This is another life hack that should just be used universally. If you’re not using AI for practically ALL research, ALL planning, and ALL life organizing… you’re not only behind the times, but you’re just unnecessarily doing life on hard mode. I don’t know why everyone’s not on board already, but if you want to take 10x more time on everything, by all means just go ahead and use traditional google search and travel planning. Not only is AI like having a really competent personal assistant, but it also undercuts other medical tourism companies. You could use companies like My Medical Vacations, Placid Way, BookiMed, Medical Tourism Corporation, and Medical Departures… but in my opinion, their days are numbered when everyone finally wakes up and realizes they can do the same services themselves without going through any middlemen, or tagging on any middlemen fees.

Tip #4, Use Your Anchor Treatment’s Concierge Service: So in my case, my “anchor treatment” was hair graft surgery. Because it’s a bigger ticket item, and it’s a competitive market, they’re usually willing to arrange your hotel, transportation, and mor… and even lump it into the price of your treatment. I used my anchor treatment (a hair graft company) to help me book several other things related to my trip. They were very helpful. I had some mixed emotions about this, like I may have been over-taxing them, but after thinking even longer about that I also remembered that it’s not so different from how business sometimes works in America as well. I own a real estate brokerage, and when a client is coming in from out of state to buy a house, it was not uncommon for our agents to function as sort of a “catch all” concierge for anything they might need during their stay. It was not uncommon for us to help recommend, plan, or even arrange all kinds of activities, transportation, lodging, etc… and we’ve been happy to do it. Not only was doing so a way to differentiate our real estate services as “above and beyond” what the other guy might do, but it was also an act of gratitude. We were happy to have the business, and felt like the real estate commission was more than adequate compensation for all the extra work. I could be wrong, but I imagine these medical service providers to be in the same situation. Maybe there’s a line beyond where we might be too taxing, but in the end I imagine that they are grateful for the business, happy you’re working with them instead of their competitor. Anyway, in this way, the concierge services of your foreign-language-speaking, on-the-ground helper can rival or even exceed that of AI helpers. Use them!

Tip #5, scout your vacinity for ancilary services: In my case, my hair graft clinic (or anchor treatment) helped me arrange dentistry. They helped arrange a WONDERFUL kids’ dentistry business right nearby, actually only three doors down in the same hall. They were great and I highly recommend them… but even if that option had not worked out, there were half a dozen other dentists on the same floor. I could have easily used their services, and all the dentists I talked to had top notch English as well. On the same floor there were also B12 etc IV treatments one could take advantage of, as well as dermatology and cosmetic salons as well. I had microneedling with exosomes treatment done for $150 which would have cost 5-700 in America. That wasn’t the main reason I came to Cancun, but it was affordable, convenient, and was nice to take advantage of while there. You do have to shop a little bit though, and not everything may be a better price. One dermatologist office I stopped in (wanting to get some skin spots looked at) said they would see me for about $200. That’s as expensive as America, and possibly even more if my American insurance had been paying for it. So, I declined. Still, it didn’t cost me anything, or any inconvenience, to just walk the hall and price services until I found the services that made financial sense.

What’s more, my Spanish is NOT great. Doesn’t matter though. Google translate worked perfectly fine for every conversation, or your AI of choice could do the same. I hear there is cutting edge tech that can translate real time, and the next thing will be real-time subtitles in your classes… but that’s not here QUITE yet, not in 2026. Doesn’t matter though, the tech we have right now on your phone is more than enough, and other people I met seem adept as using the same tech on their own devices. It’s just a slower conversation, that’s all, but adequate for everything you might need in my opinion. As long as you have cell phone service, no international travel or communication is a problem any more… for any country.

Tip #6, some very niche services might need advanced verification: I wanted to have a coronary CT angiogram done. In longevity circles, this is often touted as a gold standard test which can give you a baseline for your atheroscerotic state for decades into the future. Basically, it can tell you how much soft plaque buildup you might have, when normal CT scans only recognize more serious hard plaque. A CT angiogram allows you to analyze your longer term horizon (20-30+ years out), not just what’s going to get you in the next decade. Anyway, I inquired of half a dozen places before going and half a dozen more once arriving in Cancun. I was surprised to have found NONE that offered the service, even though many even had the service offered on their websites or other web media. Even the famous Hospital Galenia didn’t have it. They had a simpler thoracic CT, but not a coronary CT angiogram. I went to 3-4 other places that have web history saying they had it, but had moved locations or out of business when I arrived to inquire in person. If you know of somewhere in Cancun that actually has this service, please let us know. Anyway I just mention this as an example for really niche longevity or biohacking lab panels, scans, or other services that you might not find offered yet in Cancun, unfortunately. I plan to have future videos and blog posts about domestic medical tourism, finding the cheapest options WITHIN the US, and in those we can elaborate more on ways to save and make these services accessible to all, even lower middle class.

Tip #7, stem cells: I didn’t do this treatment this time, but may in the future and am very interested in the prospects of this field. Based on my reading and research, intravenous stem cell injections to offer immense benefits, systemic rejuvenation to organ systems throughout the body. One of my main problems, however, is that the price point has not reached the level of the common man. Injections of 1-200 million stem cells (necessary for therapeutic benefit) usually cost at least 5-6k, even on the low end. The price can easily be 3-4x this if you’re not shopping around. The problem is that many of the health benefits and even age reversing results in primate and human studies require a high dose frequency. One of my favorite studies is the Lei et al study done by the Chinese Academy of Science last year in aged macaques. By usung edited human mesenchymal stem cells they were able to see massive age reversal in monkeys equivalent to about 10-15 years adjusted for human age. In their controls, they saw about ¾ of the benefit even with traditional human stem cells, very similar to what you could get in Cancun clinics. The problem is, these primates were getting new dosing every two weeks. It's possible you could get 10+ years of your biological age reversed, right now, IF you were willing to do this every other week for a year. At sticker price, without a special negotiated rate, this would cost over $100,000. This is not something any common man can afford currently, and thus this longevity treatment is still not accessible to anyone other than the wealthy. Even for the wealthy, the scheduling and time constraint of this frequency would be a challenge. Stay tuned for the future though, because we’re actively exploring ways that the rejuvenative power of stem cells COULD be brought to the masses, with supply chains and pricing that could even accommodate the lower middle class.

Tip #8, passports: I read that roughly 50% of Americans don’t even have passports. For the love of… come on, just go get it. #1, you can’t even participate in the global market, and take a stand against the monopolistic American medical system if you don’t have the ability to go abroad. You’re virtually guaranteeing your perpetual victim status. #2 it’s kind of like voter registration. Capitalism allows you to vote with your dollar, but if you can’t leave, you can’t even cast your ballot. #3 If you’re 100% sure that sanity will ALWAYS reign supreme in the American political system, then by all means DON’T get your passport. When I talk to people though, there is no confidence that political sanity will prevail long term. Sure, there is honor and dignity in sticking around to fix what you’re a part of, but if things ever take a hard turn where you’re suddenly a powerless victim, you don’t have the recourse to leave if you don’t have a passport. You don’t HAVE to leave, but to me not having one just makes no sense. Ok I’ll get off this soap box…

In this article we talked about a lot of broad brush overview aspects of medical tourism. In the future, my plan is to give you a lot of the nitty gritty of my Cancun experience. Finally, although our main intent is to help empower people to do budget health enhancing hacks on their own, we can indeed help if you need concierge services from Americans. Just reach out to us and we can tell you about services.