It's a drag when you are too darn far from Tijuana and don't have the cash to get your work done overseas. My daughter was recently in the UK for a visit. She had just recently borrowed $3000 from my mother for scaling (multiple visits) and repair of bad past dental work. She has 2 missing teeth with a poorly fitted and obvious bridge--and she is  a hairdresser, an occupation where you are supposed to look good and where you work close to people.
It's all because when she was younger, we either had no dental coverage and no money, or the coverage was terrible. There was only 1 year when we had full coverage, we tried to get lots done but there wasn't time to fix everything. For 3 years we had MediCal, which is California's state insurance plan for poor people (we were on welfare so no extra cash at all after rent and very basic food). She needed a root canal but only ONE dental surgeon in the whole county would accept MediCal. His rule was that if you wanted treatment and you were on MediCal, you weren't allowed to make an appointment like "real" patients, but you could come and wait at his office for days on end until someone didn't show up. The he was horribly abusive to us. To make matters worse, his work was awful--one of the 2 teeth she is missing now is the one he "fixed," the other is the one right next to it and was lost due to his poor work as well.
She wants to get tooth implants but they are $6000 each at minimum. As a single mom, even with a reasonable job that is not going to happen.
BTW, since moving to the UK I have had really good dental care. And no problem finding an NHS dentist. I think maybe that is mostly a London/SE issue? I have needed to register with a new practice 3 times in 7 years and always found someone close to home, and right away, with no problem or waiting. So far the work has also been good, although I do think they are still too quick to extract rather than save teeth. Mine have the same history as my daughter's though, so probably were beyond saving...