Her Knee Surgery Cost Her Nothing. Her Husband’s Employer Paid Her $5,000 to Go

Cancun, Mexico.

Donna Ferguson woke before sunrise on a sweltering Saturday in July and skipped the beach completely.

Instead, she walked down a short hallway from her Sheraton hotel and into Galenia Hospital, where a surgeon from Milwaukee stood by her bed with a black marker and circled the knee he was about to replace.

Donna was 56 at the time and spent most of her day on her feet, assembling furniture toolkits at a plant in Ecru, Mississippi. Her knee had been giving her trouble for two years.

Then her husband, Terry, heard about a deal at work.

His employer, Ashley Furniture, would cover the whole operation in Cancun — no deductible, no copay, flights and hotel included. And when Donna got home, the company would hand her a check for $5,000.

Why would a company pay someone to leave the country?

Because a knee replacement in a US hospital averaged about $30,000 back then, and sometimes ran double or triple that. At Galenia, the same surgery was about $12,000. The Johnson & Johnson implant cost $3,500 there versus nearly $8,000 at home… and a night in the hospital ran $300 instead of the US average of $2,000.

In other words, sending Donna to Mexico — and paying her for it — still cost Ashley less than half the bill at home.

A friend told her she was nuts.

But the surgeon, Dr. Thomas Parisi, was a Mayo Clinic graduate, and Galenia is accredited by Joint Commission International (the global arm of the group that accredits US hospitals).

Surgery started at 8:20 a.m. By 9:30 it was done. A little over three hours later, a physical therapist had her standing with a walker, and by the next morning she was on crutches in the hallway.

She spent ten more days at the hotel doing therapy twice a day.

Donna’s surgery was in 2019, when KFF Health News followed her to Cancun. Prices have moved since then.

Today a total knee replacement in the US runs $35,000 to $60,000 if you’re paying cash. Accredited hospitals abroad quote a fraction of that. Hisar Intercontinental Hospital in Istanbul, which holds JCI accreditation, lists a knee replacement package at $8,500 on Bookimed.

No employer deal? That $8,500 spread over five years works out to about $142 a month, before interest. That’s less than many car payments.

And if your company is self-insured, ask HR whether it offers a medical travel benefit. Ashley had sent ten people to Cancun and about 140 to Costa Rica by then.

Donna paid nothing. Interesting…