It is and many immigrant families frequent their origin countries for this purpose (my own as well as many others I know), but it’s hard for someone born and raised in the United States to conceptualize what this looks like in a country like Portugal, Armenia, Russia, Turkey, Korea, etc. There’s issues of trust, risk, learning new and unusual systems, travel discomfort, and the incumbent American system benefits from this. It’s a massive thing for someone in Nebraska to say “let me check treatment options for my chronic back pain in Seoul and run the numbers”.

There’s nothing, absolutely nothing that as an immigrant I loathe more in the United States than the healthcare system. It is disgusting. The mediocrity of the average doctor combined with how much they charge for that mediocrity blows my mind every time life forces me into their wretched cabinets.