Mexico

Mexico’s healthcare system is a mix of public and private, and the destination just recently achieved universal healthcare coverage. Its uneven distribution of wealth is what makes the private healthcare system so big, as approximately 66 percent of the 4,500 hospitals are privately owned. The public healthcare centers are usually overcrowded, as two-thirds of its population relies on the public system, and they will often seek cheap private healthcare as a way to avoid waiting long periods of time to get treated. Unsurprisingly, Mexico ranks as the No. 1 destination for North American medical tourists. Border towns like Tijuana and popular, inland, English-speaking vacation destinations like Guadalajara are both gaining massive ground as destinations for uninsured or underinsured Americans who are looking to receive quality medical attention at heavily reduced costs. Some estimates place the number of U.S. and Canadian residents crossing the border for medical services as high as one million per year.

Medical tourism associations at the city and state levels have been actively engaged in marketing, promotion, and other activities such as familiarization tours and trade missions to attract American patients and American self-funded business that could refer patients across the border. Mexico performs very well in tourism-specific aspects of the MTI. Low healthcare costs help earn its rank as the No. 3 destination for the Medical Tourism dimension, and it earns a No. 24 rank in traditional tourism.

*Based on the 2020 – 2021 Global MTI (Medical Tourism Index) Report published by the Medical Tourism Association.*