Americans go to Mexico for a cheaper perfect smile

[HFWR]

Americans go to Mexico for a cheaper perfect smile - Yahoo! News

Quote:

U.S. dental treatment costs up to four times as much as in Mexico, making it tough for uninsured Americans to treat common problems such as abscessed teeth or pay for dentures. A dental crown in the United States costs upward of $600 per tooth, compared to $190 or less in Mexico. Aspiring Mexican dentists are moving to border cities in droves and are luring American patients away from farther flung discount destinations such as Hungary and Thailand.

Wonder how much for a couple of implants?

(No, not that kind...)

[loosechickens]

We've gone to a dentist over the border in Mexico for more than a dozen years, and when we lived in Mexico before that as well. Excellent dentists, inexpensive prices and very good work.

If you're interested in implants, Dr. Rubio specializes in them. He no longer does the other general dentistry work, mostly only implants, but we started going to him long ago when he was first starting his practice, which now employs half a dozen dentists. He trained in the U.S., goes every year for seminars and training....a good guy, just over the border from Yuma AZ.

Prices are a fraction of the U.S. cost, and work is excellent.

Clinica Integral Rubio

Hope this helps.

LooseChickens

[innova]

I don't doubt that there are some great doctors providing services across the border, and that the increasing costs of healthcare in the US will only increase the demand and incidence of people seeking treatment in other countries.

What sort of recourse is there in the event of malpractice? To me, thats the kicker. In my industry (pharma), I understand folks getting meds from Canada, but cannot fathom why people risk ordering meds from shady websites supplied by 3rd world countries.

[Orchidflower]

Thanks for the lead, loosechickens.
Had some major surgery done in Nueva Laredo, Mexico, 10 years ago. Cheap and good work. Dr. also had studied over here.
Innova is right, tho. I was lucky. Some of the other patients who went to the same clinic were left maimed (no idea if it was the same physician or not, but suspect from the dates of injury it was not). That particular clinic was closed totally, and you used to be able to find tons of nasty comments about it on the web.
Just do your preliminary homework on anyone you use out of the country...heck, do it here, too. They aren't all saints.

[playaman]

I was in Tijuana, Baja California, yesterday and couldn't help but notice all the dental clinics whose clientèle is clearly American. Found the city even more depressing than my last visit several years ago, with the triple-fencing going in on the American side (beneath megalights and cameras) reminiscent of moving form Western Europe to the Communist Eastern Europe of the 1970s (minus the machine guns and land mines, of course).

A Mexican friend who I was visiting pointed out Tijuana now has 2 million inhabitants (roughly the same as metro San Diego), but has a budget of $300 million a year vis-a-vis $3 billion for the City of San Diego, daily kidnappings and open gang warfare between the drug cartels. The friend said tourism has dropped from 19 million to Baja California Norte 20 years ago to about a million and a half in 2007 (although officially reported at 4 million). If medical and dental visits from the U.S. can help their economy and Americans' pocketbooks, while still providing U.S.-level care, I'm all for it. Crossing the border back into the U.S. now, though, is a major pain -- it took an hour walking, would have taken up to three hours if we had driven.

[loosechickens]

We go across the border in the Yuma AZ area, to Los Algodones, which pretty much exists to service the gringo population that streams across the border for dentists, doctors, pharmacies and opticians.

Best defense against malpractice is the same as it is in this country, research your dentist or doctor, pay attention to where he studied, question present and past patients, get recommendations from people you trust, and then..........let it up to the Universe.

We spend so much of our lives worrying about what would happen if something went wrong.....stuff happens, and I doubt it happens any more in Mexico than it does here. It's not a big worry for me. We have used dentists in Algodones, and when we lived in Oaxaca, never had a single problem in over twenty years.

Now, deep into Mexico, you might find conditions a bit funky compared to what you're used to, but disease barrier procedures, etc., are excellent and the same as in the U.S.

I do still remember the endodontist I went to some years ago in Oaxaca for a root canal. He had a small room, open to the street, about 10 x 12 with a dental chair, a small desk and several chairs for waiting patients, and a tv up on the wall. He was alone, no receptionist (low overhead), and he did my root canal with people passing by in the street, taking appointments on a cordless phone that he held in the crook of his neck and shoulder while watching a game show on tv. The root canal was fine, never gave me a minutes trouble and cost about 20% of the price in the states.

But, most Americans would have run screaming from the place, as they might have from a dentist I went to in Pochutla, down on the Pacific, who when I had an absessed tooth, sent me up the street to another dentist, with bib attached around my neck, to get an x-ray, because her machine was broken. So I walked up the street, wearing my bib, went to the other dentist, got my xray and carried it back to my dentist, who proceeded to treat me.

Of course, the offices along the border are MUCH more "Americanized", since their clientele is gringos and they have learned how much appearances matter to them. But down in the interior, especially in places where tourists and expatriates do not abound, it's quite different. Still excellent work, though.

Actually, the only bad dental work I've had in my life was right here in the good ole U.S.A. Go figure.

LooseChickens