Third World Health Care for First World Citizens

[AlphaCentauri]

MEXICO'S HEALTH SYSTEM CAN BE A BOON TO FOREIGNERS, TOO

With his bad heart, bum knee and hemorrhage-prone blood, Aubrey Righton knows a thing or three about the way of all flesh. And as a 19-year resident of Mexico, the retired trucker also knows a good deal about his adopted land.

So the 78-year-old Righton and his wife, Mary Ellen, have melded that knowledge to keep themselves as healthy as possible. And for the past decade, they have been enthusiastic patrons of Mexico's vast but tottering social security hospital system that offers health care to all at low costs. "They don't have to accommodate you, but they do," said Righton, who holds dual Canadian and Mexican citizenship.

With health insurance a growing crisis north of the border, officials here expect many retirees like the Rightons - and future North American retirees from the Baby Boom generation - to flock to the Mexican social security system. "This is a bargain," said Salvador Orozco, the surgeon who runs a hospital in Guadalajara.

But it's a bargain fraught with problems.

Like its counterparts in the U.S., Mexico's social security system faces a serious financial squeeze. The system's hospitals are aging and under-equipped, its medical staffs almost hopelessly overworked, its pharmacies often short of medicines.

Still, more than 1,400 foreign retirees have joined the Mexican Social Security Institute.

For a premium of $270 a year, they have access to a network of outpatient clinics, full-service hospitals and pharmacies where care and medicine are provided at no extra charge.

"It's wonderful," said Mary Ellen Righton, 81, an U.S. citizen who spent two weeks in a Guadalajara social security hospital several years ago after suffering a fall. "The care is just great. And of course your medicine, your hospital and everything is free."

For now, the number of elderly foreigners using the system is an almost imperceptible sliver of the estimated 60,000 retirees in Jalisco state, which includes Guadalajara and the retiree havens that line the shore of Lake Chapala.

The retirees in the system make up an even smaller percentage of the more than 1.4 million Mexicans who use the public hospitals and clinics in Jalisco. Those numbers illustrate the system's problems.

"The system is saturated, that's the reality of it," said Juan Jose Gonzalez, the spokesman for the Mexican Social Security Institute regional office in Guadalajara.

The overload is all too evident at the social security institute Hospital No. 89 in Guadalajara, a well-worn facility where most American and other foreign retirees in the area go for major medical care.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/16/MNL2TRJAV.DTL

First World Health Care

The boy and his parents appeared at the Family Health Centers office in Fort Myers unannounced, carrying a note from a private pediatrician:

"Please take care of this patient. He has chronic liver failure."

Dr. Jorge Quinonez, a pediatrician and Family Health Centers' medical director, works with uninsured immigrant families. Their treatment can be difficult on both ends — for them, finding doctors who will see them; for the American medical system, finding a way to manage the often uncompensated cost of their care. This was the most dramatic case Quinonez had ever seen.

Quinonez persuaded All Childrens Hospital in St. Petersburg to admit the child. When doctors there realized the extent of his illness, they sent him back. Dialysis would cost $50,000 a year, and the boy needed that, as well as immediate placement on the kidney transplant list.

Quinonez's practice doesn't offer that kind of specialized care. He told the members of the family to go home to Mexico for treatment. They did, and Quinonez has heard since the boy is doing well.

In this case, both sides achieved their aims. The boy got his medical care and the American health system avoided the cost of caring for him.

That's not typical.

Immigration poses challenges for the health care system, which often can't get compensated for cost of care. A 2003 Florida Hospital Association survey of 39 hospitals found the medical centers gave away $40.2 million in charity care for illegal immigrants. That didn't take into account the noncitizens who are here legally but who are uninsured and underemployed and are likely to land in emergency rooms.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071230/NEWS01/712300369/1075

[Warpy]

1. It also doesn't address US citizens who are uninsured

or uninsurable through no fault of their own. Of course, we citizens tend to own property, even if it's just a battered car, TV set, and a weekly paycheck that can be garnished, and the hospitals will eventually get paid.

US citizens fare the worst of all in this "first world" health care system in this country. If they have insurance, they have to fight for everything they get when they're sick and least able to fight. If they have a chronic illness, they can't get insurance at any price (my situation). If they get sick and are covered, they often find out there were a lot of things they needed that didn't show up on the insurance company's computer program that they'll get charged for at full price while they're trying to get well.

Our system is broken. Our system is in crisis. Nobody realizes that until they need the system, though, and that's the problem. It's happening one person at a time.

Nothing that leaves for profit corporate insurance in place will work.

I'm heading to Mexico soon on vacation to see if I can stand living there. If not, I'll explore Argentina, Spain, France, or Portugal. I just know I can't afford to live in my own country. 20 years as an uninsurable nonperson are enough.

[AlphaCentauri]

2. It so sad that people look the other way instead of their commonwealth

In Mexico a country with millions of poor people any person from other country can have all health expenses including prescriptions for only 270.00 a year that's amazing, here people can die if they are not fully cover by their 250 a month premiums, hum.

Hope you find a nice place live in one of those countries.

[shireen]

4. please report back, if possible ...

i'm curious to know your impressions of those countries.

Central and South America are trending towards democratic governments; it's not perfect but at least it seems to be heading in that direction. Is that a correct impression?

[Warpy]

7. Thanks to having the US bogged down halfway across the world

they've managed to elect leftist governments they've wanted all along in Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia..and to a lesser extent, Argentina. Mexico's election was diddled by the right, but enough people realize it that the right's days are numbered there.

Colonial oligarchies are still clinging grimly to as much power as they can in all those countries. Times are likely to be as interesting there as they will be here, although I will at least be able to afford the health care I am likely to need in the not too distant future.

[pitohui]

11. what part of mexico are you going to or do you know yet?

i have an area in mind that i would probably go to, if something happened to my husband, since i can only get health insurance through my job

good luck to you, of the countries you name, i think mexico would be far by the most affordable and easier to emigrate to, you need $2K a month income to be accepted into most of the mexican states, correct?

might be tough to even get an apartment in some areas of france with only $2K a month!

[shireen]

3. we'll soon have illegal Americans in Mexico ...

It's sad, isn't it, that countries with far less means and technology than us are able to take better care of their citizens. I grew up in Malaysia, and medical care was never a concern when I was growing up.

[AlphaCentauri]

8. 1994 report confirm that there are American illegals in Mexico

According to Mexican officials, 200,000 Americans are living illegally in Mexico, some of the "drybacks" have been attracted to Mexico by the promise of NAFTA-inspired jobs. There are 150,000 Americans registered with Mexico's National Migration Institute as permanent residents, and two million Americans visit Mexico every year as tourists.

Americans entering Mexico receive automatic six-month tourist visas, versus the one-month visas granted to most Latin Americans. These visas can be renewed by crossing the US border and returning. Most illegal Americans appear to be retirees living in Baja, California, but there are ever more frequent reports of young and educated Americans arriving in Mexico City to teach English.

Under Mexican law, Americans wishing to retire in Mexico must have an income of at least $ 2,000 a month, and business visitors must prove that they have an association with an established U.S. or Mexican company.


Andres Oppenheimer, "U.S. citizens live illegally in Mexico--Drybacks' seeking jobs," Dallas Morning News, July 17, 1994, 1A. Andres Oppenheimer, "Door between Mexico, US Swings Both Ways," Miami Herald, July 5, 1994.



http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=392_0_2_0

[pitohui]

14. it is very easy to enter mexico

even post 911 mexico is not concerned with checking too hard or sometimes at all who is entering the country from the usa or from cruise ships

they have a lot to gain from having people bringing hard currency into mexico and nothing to gain by discouraging people

it's true that they don't want americans taking jobs that should be taken by mexicans, it's just good sense to protect jobs for one's own citizens, and if we had a working gov't, we'd be trying to protect jobs for our own citizens -- so, as the title says, i guess the door does swing both ways

[Selatius]

5. Mexicans have already started complaining about rich Americans setting up enclaves in Mexico.

Their excessive consumption of resources like water crowds out local needs, and the amount of money they spend is driving up property values where few local Mexicans can afford the increases.

The result? They become displaced and forced off the land, and some who are in places like Baja, which is close to California, have likely immigrated northward into the US to find jobs, and the irony is the rich people in places like Orange County are complaining about the illegals flooding across the border when they're contributing to the problems south of the border.

[pitohui]

12. yes some people will bitch about anything

but in reality there is not a hell of a lot of downside to having people bring hard currency into your area

i notice when people bitch about the rich moving to new orleans (which none have, other than jolie and pitt) then it's always someone who has maybe visited new orleans way back in 1970 or something, not somebody who knows that what we need is more outside money coming in and not less

[AlphaCentauri]

13. if Mexican can afford a house anymore

I don't think they care much about foreign investment.

[pitohui]

15. mexican/usa relations is very much about attracting usa dollars

increasingly it's about attracting canadian dollars and other foreign investment as well

nobody ever moved forward by remaining trapped in stone age level subsistence agriculture, nobody

as a country industrializes, farmers are displaced from the land, do you understand that only 3 percent of the population of the usa are farmers? a nation where 30% of the people are tied to the land and dependent on the uncontrollable cycle of the weather, which means that some years they will actually LOSE MONEY by working, my friend, that just sucks

people who romanticize subsistence agriculture don't know what it is

[AlphaCentauri]

17. on the other side is about attracting dollars on this side is about markets

opening a 103 million market is great but better if we destroy their own market first.

[flashl]

6. The U.S. 'first class' system can best be described as the 'death industry'. n/t

[AlphaCentauri]

9. No kidding

Nataline Sarkisyan died on Thursday, November 20 because her insurance company denied her coverage for a liver transplant. She died at 5:50 pm after her family decided to take her off life support at UCLA Medical Center.

http://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/publish/Local_News_10/Teen_Dies_When_Insurance_Denies_Liver_Transplant.php

[AlphaCentauri]

10. WHAT? International Medical Tourism Conference

Medical tourism offers low-cost high-quality healthcare options to the patient but it involves a lot of planning and research on their part. “Going abroad for surgery is not same as walking to your hospital on the next street; there are a number of things that need consideration. From access to transparent information on international healthcare facilities and surgeons to details of surgical procedures, and from timely correspondence with the overseas hospital to booking the medical travel itinerary, consumer demands are multifaceted. Understanding the requirements of medical tourists and implementing that into our informative web portal is what has led us to achieving our mission of providing healthcare beyond boundaries by empowering consumers with information and making high quality healthcare accessible to everyone at affordable prices,”

http://healthcare.dbusinessnews.com/shownews.php?type_news=latest&newsid=145527

[pitohui]

16. should be self explanatory, shouldn't it?

some years back my husband got care in mexico and saved $20K, i got prescriptions there for a small cost and saved maybe another $1,000 over the cost of getting them as an uninsured person in the usa

so medical tourism is a PARTIAL solution to the health care crisis, but it only works for people who have SOME savings or credit, it cannot work for people who are very young and have no savings/credit or people who have never earned enough to have good savings/credit

a second problem with medical tourism is that it only works for surgeries and other care that can be planned ahead, it is useless for emergency surgery

example, if i have time, maybe i can fly to india and by pass surgery for $16K there, however, both my parents, their bypass surgery was performed in response to an immediate medical emergency, so they didn't have that option -- if they hadn't had health insurance, they would have lost everything they owned because the cost in the usa is six figures EACH

if you are uninsured, certainly have some savings in the event you can get help in mexico or elsewhere, but you still have to be very, very careful to avoid accidents, situations where you might get injured (sports), and still there is the chance of sudden events like heart attacks where you couldn't get to the other country in time

medical tourism is a stopgap some of us are using but it is NOT a practical answer for many situations