My Teeth Did Not Know They Were in Colombia

Medical Freedom · 2026-05-30

The hygienist snapped on her gloves, adjusted the light, and got to work. Scraping, polishing, rinsing, the familiar suggestion that I could be doing more with flossing. About forty minutes later, I had clean teeth and a bill for thirty dollars.

Back home in Fort Myers, I’d been paying around $280.

My teeth did not know they were in Colombia. I was beginning to think the rest of me should pay more attention to the lesson.

I liked my dentist in Florida. Still do. But sitting in that office in Barranquilla, I had trouble finding $250 worth of difference between the two appointments. Both had accomplished the fairly modest thing I’d gone there to accomplish.

That interested me enough to start keeping track.

A small collection of dental bills

Over time, my informal scorecard grew. These were prices I paid at particular offices, rather than a survey of what you should expect everywhere. Exchange rates also affect what those bills cost in dollars.

Piedecuesta, Colombia — $20
San Juan de Urabá, Colombia — $25
Barranquilla, Colombia — $30
Cartagena, Colombia — $50
Panama City, Panama — $100

Piedecuesta was the cheapest, though I recognize it may not feature prominently in your travel plans. Cartagena, which probably has a better chance, still came in well below what I paid at home.

Panama City was more expensive. It also felt more familiar in some ways, including dental offices with more equipment under one roof. There were differences among the places I visited, just as there are differences among offices in Florida. I wouldn’t choose a dentist from this table alone.

But those bills got me wondering what else was possible with medical arbitrage.

For years, I’d compared prices within the place where I happened to live. Somewhere along the way, without making a conscious decision about it, I’d treated that as the boundary of the search.

Travel gave me a few more places to look.

What a smaller office can teach you

There are tradeoffs. At some offices I used in Colombia, dental imaging was a separate errand. The dentist would send me to a radiology center for the images, then review the results afterward. I’ve seldom paid more than $30 for dental tomography there.

If you’re due for X-rays, that can mean another stop and another appointment to coordinate. The office I used in Panama had its own X-ray machine, which was more convenient. In Colombia, I was comfortable making the extra trip. It was just something to allow for in the schedule.

When the trip starts to make sense

Airfare has a way of spoiling a perfectly good thirty-dollar cleaning story.

If you’re already spending time somewhere, routine care is an easy possibility to explore. Find a provider you’re comfortable with, ask what the appointment includes, and compare the cost.

But put a few appointments together and the calculation gets more interesting. A physical and a dental cleaning might begin to make a trip worth considering. Add more substantial treatment, or an elective procedure you’d be paying for yourself at home, and the potential savings could cover considerably more than the airfare. You have to price the whole trip, including any follow-up, but it’s worth finding out.

That was how this developed for me. I was spending time in Colombia and Panama anyway. Dental appointments became something I could arrange while I was there, alongside work, friends, and whatever else brought me to town. Then I began exploring what else I could do.

More complicated treatment brings questions about the provider, follow-up, and how long you need to stay. A cleaning doesn’t answer those questions. It did get me interested enough to explore them, and the possibilities turned out to go well beyond clean teeth.

The habit that stayed

The novelty of the price never wore off. I was hooked. These days, I get nearly all my medical care and aesthetic treatments outside the U.S.

Now, when I’m somewhere I know and like, I ask what I can get done while I’m there. Sometimes the logistics are more involved, especially with treatment that requires multiple sessions. You might decide the timing or the extra trips don’t work for you.

I like the arrangement I’ve built. A personal assistant and driver helps arrange my appointments and gets me to them. I can spend a focused week or two getting things done and still have time for the sights, the food, the culture, and the people. My costs have been a fraction of what I’d expect to spend in the U.S., where a driver taking me from appointment to appointment wasn’t even part of the picture.

That’s what keeps me interested in life arbitrage. I went in for a cleaning and gradually found a way to get so much more done, with more help, in places where I enjoy spending time.

I still need to floss more, though. Apparently that part is international.