| |
Avg. Savings
vs. US pricing | 40–80% |
| |
Foreign Patients, Colombia
Jan–Aug 2026, up 17.6% | 21,034 |
| |
Malaysia Healthcare Travelers
in 2024 | 1.6M |
| |
|
|
| Quoted $15,000 at home, she paid $4,000 in Medellín |
| Fifteen thousand dollars. |
| That was the best case. The doctor wanted at least that much for Cindy Constable’s hysterectomy… and up to $40,000 if anything went wrong. |
| Cindy was self-employed and uninsured, so every dollar of that quote was hers to pay. |
| She had spent most of her adult life fighting endometriosis, ovarian cysts and fibroids (sometimes 10 to 15 at a time), with one surgery after another. In 2022 the fibroids came back hard enough to put her in the emergency room, bleeding badly. |
| A hysterectomy would end it for good. |
| But at those prices, it was out of reach. |
| In other words, she did everything right and still couldn’t afford to get well. |
| So she started reading. |
| For weeks she read hospital reviews, patient stories and forums full of strangers comparing notes. One country kept coming up… Colombia. |
| She has plenty of company. |
| Between January and August of this year, 21,034 foreign visitors came to Colombia for medical treatment, up 17.6% on the same months of 2025, according to ANATO, the country’s travel agency association. |
| Medellín took in 4,737 of them. |
| Interesting… |
| And the price there? $4,000. That one number covered the hospital stay, the surgeon’s fee, the tests before surgery and the care after it. |
| (At home, those often arrive as separate bills.) |
| Hysterectomy, no insurance |
| 🇺🇸 Her US quote |
| $15,000 |
| ↓ |
| 🇨🇴 Medellín, Colombia |
| $4,000 |
|
|
| | | “I left Colombia fully recovered and debt-free.” | | Cindy Constable, writing in Business Insider |
|
|
| But what about the quality? What about the risk? |
| Cindy was terrified, and she landed half expecting a reason to turn around. |
| She didn’t find one. |
| Her surgeon had trained for years in the US and spoke fluent English. The team explained every step, and the nurses were already at her bed when she woke up. |
| Then came the bill. |
| On the morning of the surgery she paid the whole thing up front, and the hospital promised to refund anything she didn’t end up needing. |
| (If you’ve ever fought a US hospital over a surprise charge, read that twice.) |
| That’s the part I keep coming back to. |
| At $15,000, the surgery was impossible. At $4,000, she could pay it without a loan, a credit card or a payment plan. |
| Spread over a year, that’s about $333 a month: less than a lot of people pay for a car. |
| She spent a month recovering at a friend’s place, then flew home. |
| “I left Colombia fully recovered and debt-free,” she wrote in Business Insider. |
| Will it work that way for everyone? I have no idea. Every case is different, and you still have to do the homework she did. |
| But the math is hard to ignore. Try getting that quote at home. |
|
|
| Memorial Hospitals Group, Istanbul |
| Checkup and eyelid surgery · April 2026 · businessinsider.com |
| “My annual physical back home left me underwhelmed, so I booked the most basic checkup package Memorial offers. I’m a healthy 32-year-old, and for $1,100 I got a full lab panel, cardiology tests, a chest X-ray, a dental X-ray, thyroid and abdominal ultrasounds and exams with internal medicine, eye, urology and dental doctors. |
| The day after the checkup I had upper and lower eyelid surgery, a canthoplasty and four moles removed. That came to $6,035, which covered a night in the hospital, transfers to and from the airport and my Airbnb, two follow-up visits and an English-speaking translator who stayed with me through the scan and the surgery. My only extra was $55 for medications afterward. |
| I set every price months ahead over WhatsApp, flew business class from Chicago on credit card points, and found a dental clinic nearby that cleaned my teeth and took X-rays for $88. I flew home with some bruising on my face. Two weeks in Istanbul, care included, came to about $7,500, and months later I’m still happy with the results and the price.” |
| Brett H., South Florida Verified Patient |
|
|
|
| Quick Reads |
| Destination |
| Penang’s big first half |
| Penang welcomed about 285,400 medical tourists in the first six months of 2026, according to the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council, and they brought in RM601.8 million in revenue. For scale, the Malaysian state counted 527,176 foreign patients across all of last year. Penang is also home to Island Hospital, which Malaysia named its first Flagship Medical Tourism Hospital last December. And the whole country is in the middle of Malaysia Year of Medical Tourism 2026, a government push running alongside Visit Malaysia 2026. A national campaign built around patients from abroad… interesting. This is one to watch. |
| Trend |
| Korea pitches its clinics in Los Angeles |
| On September 17, the Korea Tourism Organization held its first large-scale medical and wellness tourism roadshow in the United States, at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE. Twelve Korean medical and wellness institutions sat down with American travel and healthcare partners for more than 150 one-on-one meetings. In other words, Korean clinics want American patients, and they’re building the pipeline through US companies. That could mean more packaged trips to Korea with the price set before you fly. Or it may not. We’ll see. |
| Safety Note |
| Turkey’s clinic deadline is December 31 |
| Turkey’s health tourism rules, in force since April 2025, give hospitals, medical centers, labs and dialysis centers that treat foreign patients until December 31, 2026 to earn accreditation from TÜSKA, the state quality and accreditation institute. Other facilities need a certificate from the Ministry of Health. The same rules made complications insurance mandatory for surgery done in an operating room on health tourists. So before you book anything in Turkey for next year, ask two questions. Is the clinic authorized for health tourism? And does your price include complications insurance? A good clinic answers both fast. |
