The domestic access picture
Over 40% of US adults report unreasonable healthcare wait times, per AANP survey data, and this is before accounting for the separate issue of self-pay or underinsured patients facing scheduling deprioritization. Canada's median specialist wait runs 27.7 weeks; the UK's NHS waiting list runs into the millions of people.
The medical tourism scheduling advantage
Clinics serving international patients specifically build their scheduling around it — most elective procedures, from colombiacosmeticsurgery.com to colombiadentist.co, can be booked within days to a few weeks of initial contact, since these clinics don't carry the same domestic queue pressure.
An honest caveat
This comparison favors medical tourism most clearly for elective, non-emergency procedures. It says nothing about emergency or urgent care, where domestic systems (despite their other issues) generally triage appropriately.
The Takeaway
If a long domestic wait is part of your decision calculus, it's a legitimate and often underweighted factor — not just a cost comparison.