I feel that traveling for hernia repair is a legitimate concern. Should short term complications arise you may or may not be covered by insurance. You may end up staying at facilities and seeing doctors you are not familiar with. If you have long term complications you will likely have to make repeated trips to the doctor that treated you in the first place. The trouble with long term complications is that the specialist is not sure that there is one and will tell you that healing is progressing normally. That can go on for months.

On the other hand having a hernia treated locally by a general surgeon can be a big mistake. Overall, I would say that the danger of being treated by a local surgeon is worse. But traveling to be treated has it’s issues.