Column: What’s it Prefer to Journey for Medical Care? I Crossed the Border to Discover Out – California Health Report

by Amy DePaul, California Health Report
July 8, 2026

Earlier this yr, I occurred to see a social media video depicting Tijuana as a medical paradise for getting old Americans, who have been proven strolling throughout the border on their solution to the physician. 

After watching, I had a number of questions: Was this an answer to our well being care woes in California? Or was it creating extra issues for older adults? 

Because I’m a well being columnist, I deliberate a visit to seek out out, accompanied by my trusted photographer, Maison Tran, and a former pupil, Oliver Garcia, who documented the journey on Instagram and TikTok. Our purpose was to discover Tijuana’s medical care, speak to practitioners and their sufferers, and, sure, if time allowed, to devour a taco or two alongside the best way. Here’s what we realized:

The confluence

The western hemisphere’s busiest land border crossing pulsates at a dizzying clip with buzzing freeways, a trolly station, pedestrians coming and going over walkways, and a seemingly countless fenced border stretching throughout the horizon. 

From right here, you may’t miss the shiny blue tower: The 28-floor Newcity Medical Plaza in Tijuana stands like a beacon. It homes a hospital, working rooms, medical places of work, laboratories and imaging facilities. The plaza features a pharmacy, an optician and even a farm-to-table restaurant. There’s additionally an adjoining lodge and spa for sufferers, who’re largely out-of-towners staying in a single day to finish a number of procedures.

Newcity Medical Plaza is certainly one of many well being care amenities within the border city — which has change into a medical tourism hub — however its flashy exterior and border proximity make it stand out.

Lower prices draw sufferers

Every yr, an estimated 1 or extra million patients enterprise from California to Mexico to acquire medical remedies and medicines, and a big contingent of those are getting old individuals. 

Cost is the primary motive to make the journey for 60 to 70 p.c of sufferers, stated Arturo Vargas Bustamante, a professor within the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. 

“They cross the border mostly because cost is lower or they cannot access health care in the U.S. They have no insurance or are minimally insured,” he stated. “They are saving their U.S. coverage for emergencies … They simply cannot afford high deductibles or high copays.”

About two-thirds of sufferers travelling from the US to Mexico are U.S.-born Latinos or Latino immigrants, based on Bustamante’s analysis. In the years to come back, the share of older U.S.-based sufferers is predicted to extend because the immigrant inhabitants ages and grows extra various, he stated.

The hottest remedies amongst older sufferers who cross the border are dental providers, based on research and consultants I interviewed, largely as a result of so many lower-income staff and retirees don’t get dental care by way of their insurance coverage or their fundamental Medicare package deal. 

After dentistry, probably the most in-demand remedies for older sufferers are plastic and bariatric surgical procedures, based on Dr. Fabian Walters, the president of the Baja Health Cluster, a Tijuana-based community connecting sufferers to 200 medical professionals, labs, hospitals and clinics. Walters stated a mean of 80 p.c of the Baja Health’s sufferers are from the U.S.

Medical clinics resembling these within the Baja Health community usually make it simple for low-mobility aged sufferers, chauffeuring them from the border to their places of work, or offering a particular “fast pass” that drivers can use to return to the U.S. in an expedited site visitors lane. As for fee, insurance coverage isn’t usually an possibility. 

“Most patients pay in cash,” Walters defined.

Besides value, one other advantage of medical tourism is the time that medical doctors take with sufferers to reply questions, Walters stated. “In general, it’s a more personal relationship between doctor and patients,” he stated.

The dental distinction

A fundamental tooth cleansing, with out X-rays, can value as little as $60 in Tijuana, based on dental web sites. But many getting old adults are coming to Tijuana for pricier advanced procedures, resembling dental implants, which are sometimes seen as far superior to traditional dentures. A full set of implants in the united statesmight value wherever between $25,000 and $100,000.

In Tijuana’s Aviacion district, about 4 miles from the border, Dr. Sergio Herrera co-owns a dental apply referred to as ProDent the place he focuses on implants. According to his website, a single implant begins at $1,700 and features a checklist of providers resembling X-rays. But the price of a single implant within the U.S. runs on common $4,500.

Eighty p.c of Herrera’s sufferers are over 50, and two thirds of these are from the U.S.

“Most are older patients that have already had dentures, or they’re missing teeth or their teeth are starting to crumble,” he stated. “The biggest reason why patients come is price” — and never simply the quantity however the transparency.

“There are many times I’ll say, ‘This is the total,’ and they come back and say, ‘Are there any add-ons?’ ‘No, this is the final price.’”

Herrera earned a Doctor of Dental Surgery diploma on the Autonomous University of Baja, California in Mexico. He accomplished a residency in implant dentistry in Boston and later, San Diego. He makes use of FDA-approved dental supplies and customarily tries to align his providers with U.S. pointers. 

His strategy, which appears to mix coaching, strategies and philosophy from two completely different cultures, is an efficient match for a lot of of his sufferers who’re snug in two cultures. A pair of cousins from Chula Vista, each over 50, who have been in Herrera’s ready room on the day I visited, exemplified the bicultural orientation. 

The two ladies grew up in each Mexico and the U.S. and converse English and Spanish interchangeably. One of the ladies stated she receives all her dental therapy in Tijuana, as a result of Medicare doesn’t cowl her dental care. Her cousin, a retired nurse, stated she feels snug in Herrera’s workplace, a brightly lit house with huge home windows, inside glass partitions and plush white dental chairs that look a bit like chaise lounges when prolonged.

Care that caters to sufferers

Other benefits of medical tourism embody speedy entry to procedures. Ken Gunderson, 71, a retiree who lives in a cell house group in Vista, stated he and his spouse have crossed the border to acquire imaging and cortisone pictures inside days, in comparison with the delays of insurance coverage approvals and wait occasions for workplace visits within the U.S. He referred to as the medical workers he’s encountered in Tijuana, “incredibly professional.”

Patients additionally report satisfaction find the precise remedies they need along with saving cash.

Danielle Sokol, 55, a chiropractor from Huntington Beach who doesn’t have dental insurance coverage, stated her value to do a sequence of procedures in Tijuana, together with extractions, was a few quarter of the quantity she was quoted domestically. Further, she was capable of finding a biologic dentist in Tijuana, that’s, one who takes a extra wholistic strategy, connecting enamel to whole-body well being.

As for bedside method in Tijuana, “They treated me like a princess. I’m serious,” she stated. 

For Sonia Nuesse, 62, and her 71-year-old husband from Chino Hills, Tijuana medical doctors and pharmacies have allowed them to seek out allergy and different prescription medicines that present higher aid than their U.S. medical doctors can present.

Is this an answer?

What I discover myself asking is whether or not medical tourism is mostly a well being care answer for U.S. sufferers. It can be onerous to argue with the overwhelming majority of sufferers I interviewed that it isn’t. But there are the reason why getting medical remedies abroad could be problematic. For one, it’s possible you’ll want after-care past a day or two out from surgical procedure, if therapeutic doesn’t happen usually, and, as soon as house, you gained’t have entry to your physician who is aware of your case. Further, much less regulation of medical professionals in Mexico can imply a much less predictable stage of care.

Procedures can and do go incorrect, as within the U.S. A couple of years in the past, a 73-year-old Laguna Woods girl I spoke to took her ailing husband to a dentist in Los Algodones, Mexico. She stated he botched the job, leaving her husband with crumbling momentary veneers that he failed to repair on second go to. She needed to get him all-new veneers within the U.S. at the price of $60,000.

Meanwhile, the lure of a Tijuana apply has enriched the town however has drawn medical professionals away from rural Mexican areas, leaving residents bereft. Mexico has addressed this downside by using Cuban physicians in these areas, UCLA’s Bustamante stated.

Another query raised by Tijuana’s free-market medication atmosphere is whether or not it provides a long-term mannequin for U.S. well being care reform. If sufferers within the U.S. paid medical doctors immediately, would these medical doctors compete for sufferers’ enterprise by considerably reducing their charges? Would we see gross sales on biopsies? Two for one PET scans?

I’ve a tough time envisioning this end result.

When I used to be a most cancers affected person, it took all my energy to endure a flurry of exams, procedures, imaging, surgical procedure and medicines throughout an emotionally fraught time. I can’t even think about making an attempt to name numerous practitioners to check quotes on the price of MRIs, ultrasounds, mastectomy, reconstruction, lymph node dissection or medicines. Instead, my medical doctors adopted protocols dictated by the newest analysis on the time. My care was lined, aside from a number of copayments. 

And that’s the best way it must be for everybody.

I’m glad getting old individuals can afford to get their enamel mounted and plenty of of their unmet well being wants addressed in Tijuana, and I used to be extremely impressed with the medical professionals I interviewed there. But right here on this aspect of the border, we want a longer-term answer, one which doesn’t drive us to depart the nation to get the care we deserve.

Amy DePaul is a California Health Report columnist who writes about getting old and well being fairness.

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