[45 percent of the population has no dental insurance. ] Americans travel to Mexico for stomach surgery, eye exams...[but mostly dentists]

Discount Dentistry, South of The Border | By Manuel Roig-Franzia | Washington Post Foreign Service | Monday, June 18, 2007; Page A01
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... Salvador found herself in an international cyber-bazaar of dentistry come-ons targeting patients in the United States, where 45 percent of the population has no dental insurance. The Internet offers crowns in Costa Rica, where "a few miles buys beautiful smiles," root canals in Bangkok and Caracas, and implants in Budapest, where the "Hungarian medical level of training compares to UK or Irish practitioners," according to one Web site.

Tempted as she was to head for Bangkok, Salvador, 58, chose Mexico, which is quickly transforming its border cities into catch basins for millions of bargain-hunting and uninsured Americans. Arizona retirement communities now organize regular bus tours for Mexican dental work and inexpensive drugs. New hospitals have opened in Tijuana, because some U.S. health plans have begun covering services in Mexico. And tiny border communities, some about an hour from Ciudad Juarez, are becoming dentistry boomtowns to handle an ever-growing flow of American patients flying in from as far away as Alaska.

In a recent University of Texas study, 86 percent of low-income El Paso residents surveyed -- half of whom were illegal immigrants -- said they receive medical care or buy prescription drugs from Mexico. Similarly, a study published in the Pan-American Journal of Health found that more than 37 percent of uninsured New Mexico border residents get medical care in Mexico.

Americans travel to Mexico for stomach surgery, eye exams and routine checkups. But it is the dentistas -- thousands of them strung along the border -- who are in the vanguard in attracting U.S. health consumers. ...