Ireland Now Pays Women to Get Their Surgery Abroad

Warsaw, Poland.

Dr. Rachel O’Connor is a doctor herself, and even that couldn’t get her the operation she needed in Ireland.

She has endometriosis, a painful condition that can need complex surgery. Moving her care abroad felt like the last hope, so she borrowed tens of thousands of euros (at least $22,500 at today’s rate) and had the surgery in Warsaw.

The surgery worked.

Then, this summer, more than a year after her operation, something unusual happened.

The Irish government paid her back.

Her costs were reimbursed under a program called the Endometriosis Surgery Abroad Interim Scheme. Ireland launched it in October 2025 alongside a new national plan for the disease. In plain English, the state now pays — often up front — for approved patients to have their surgery in another country.

By September, 57 women had gone abroad through it, to approved specialist centers that include the Cambridge Endometriosis Endoscopic Surgery Unit and the London Endometriosis and Advanced Pelvic Surgery (LEAPS) Centre.

In other words, Ireland stopped making women choose between debt and pain.

Think about what that means. A government looked at its own waiting lists and decided it was faster and smarter to buy the care somewhere else.

That’s the trend this week. And it’s running in both directions.

Some countries are paying to send patients out. Others are spending to pull patients in.

The Philippines’ tourism department told foreign investors this month that it has now accredited 13 hospitals for health tourism, six of them with JCI accreditation. Malaysia has declared 2026 its Year of Medical Tourism. South Korea treated just over 2 million foreign patients last year — a record — and took its pitch to a trade event in Los Angeles in September.

Meanwhile, Nigeria is working on the opposite. A conference in Lagos last weekend was built around keeping its patients home.

So where does that leave American readers?

Mostly on our own. There’s no US federal program that sends patients overseas when the bill at home is too high. A handful of self-insured employers do it. Everyone else does the research, books the flight, and pays the bill themselves.

Ireland’s plan isn’t perfect either. Patient advocate Doireann Barrett, one of the first approved, says the scheme doesn’t cover hotels, food, or taxis. She crowdfunded those. Being approved, she says, isn’t the same as being able to go.

Still, a government writing the check… that’s new.

Could Washington ever do it? I have no idea.

We’ll see.