I can't speak on behalf of the program in Mexico, but in Germany they charge that much because sometimes things go wrong. My first time I got Staff Infection Pneumonia and was in a coma for three weeks. I was in the hospital for 5 weeks. They lost a lot of money on me and the other girl I was there with who was in the coma for two weeks. When you go there, you sign a contract to pay 15,000 or 18,000 (which is what it went up to after we left). If you are only in the hospital for just under two weeks like I was the second time I went, or the five weeks I was the first time, the cost never changes. They sign the same contract that we have to sign that says no matter what happens, the cost never increases. Again, I don't know about Mexico. You have to understand that in Germany, they started doing this treatment in 1999 and have put less than 60 people into comas. The don't take every month, sometimes they only take four months out of the year. The hospital that it's done in, takes on a lot of risk if something goes wrong, so the only thing that funds this project is the money you pay. Unfortunately, you also have to pay room and board for whoever goes with you and all the extra costs of being away from home.
That being said, not one single German resident has had nor will ever have this treatment done on them b/c they have universal health care and the government does not want to have to pay for it. I think that's why it's still considered "experimental". As for a study, before you go to Germany and five to six months after you return, you're sent to Boston to have a specialized brain scan done. They pay to fly you there and back and this is done with each patient, so when they have enough data, they can use it to try to get the same program done here. Also, just an aside, I get a lot of experimental treatments done in the US and they're not covered by insurance. So my parents have to pay the doctor out of pocket and it usually comes to $8,000 or $11,000 each time. So a lot of things that are experimental are not only not going to pay you, but they're going to charge you as well.