Hi J.D.,

Thanks for your comment. First, let me say I am a HUGE fan of yours and of Get Rich Slowly. I stumbled upon your blog in 2006. At the time your honesty, openness and vulnerability were unmatched in the personal finance space. I followed you to Money Boss, but I am so happy that you have returned to Get Rich Slowly. It just feels right for me as a decade-plus-long reader.

As for your question about this post. I agree that medical tourism is not meant to address emergency situations. My point, perhaps not clearly stated, is that the majority of medical issues arise as emergencies that cannot delay treatment. 145 million emergency room visits occurred just last year. Those cases are much more common than elective surgeries mentioned in FIRE forums.

In the FIRE community a lot of people reference medical tourism as a means to save money, but issues like knee replacements are a blip on the radar of medical issues one might encounter throughout a lifetime. Unless people plan to permanently move to another country, (which wouldn’t be medical tourism), I think this cost saving solution is an unrealistic idea.

Also, while knee surgery is relatively straight forward, other issues like cancer treatments and organ transplant are unbelievably complex and add additional issues like the ones stated in this post above.

If you’ve never been sick it’s easy to believe you will hop on a plane for medical treatment. In reality I think most of us get sick in ways that medical tourism simply isn’t an option.

And honestly even if it is an option I think it’s easy to say what you might do in the hypothetical and much more difficult to do in real life when your life is on the line.

Thanks again for your comment. I must admit I think of you like a rockstar in the personal finance community and my heart might just have skipped a beat when I saw your comment on my blog.

One common example I hear is major dental work. This is something you can plan for. It’s not a rush. Another possible use would be my girlfriend’s recent knee surgery. She’s had a bum knee for twenty years. She wanted it fixed. It cost her a fortune here at home. If we were up on medical tourism, we might have been able to leverage a trip to Ecuador (or some other place).

Anyhow, I just felt like this piece was making objections to medical tourism based on things it’s not meant to actually be used for.