Mexico’s surprising health care

By Alfredo Peppard

Oaxaca, Mexico




Last night, September 15, we celebrated Mexico’s independence from Spain in a hotel Room overlooking the Zocalo. Most of us at the party were retired expats so it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to health care. What we learned about Mexican health care was a revelation.

Let’s start with James, the host of our small group, who is an “out” gay man. James, who retired in his early sixties, has been HIV positive for six years. He had prepared his move down here for four years and is now a permanent resident. His medical bills in Seattle were enormous. The periodic testing and drug costs would have been unaffordable had he not had employer provided insurance. Here, in backward third-world Mexico, his care and drugs are free. He praised the quality of the clinic’s staff and their concerned care.

The Mexican State, which is not a liberal institution by any means, regards HIV/AIDS as a dangerous epidemic that is a threat to public health rather than as God’s vengeance for transgressions against Old Testament preachments. Therefore it has encompassed all public information, testing, and treatment within its national health care system. In the U.S. a large number of voters would have voted for a political party that is fundamentally opposed to their economic interests to prevent this sensible approach to HIV/AIDS. In Mexico this is not an issue, thanks to public education by the state around the realities of the threat. The Mexican right, which controls the state, is made up of some of the most unsavory individuals that you will find anywhere. But it’s far more intelligent than that gang of baboons that control the Republican Party in the U. S.

Jane, a health care worker from Austin, Texas, lost her husband’s Social Security benefits when he died. She was making too much money to get widow’s benefits but her income was too small to live on with comfort; so she retired as soon as she could to get her full benefits. Then she moved down here. Like all of us who are much past sixty, she has her share of health problems but has found that having them attended to in the private fee-for-service sector is so much cheaper than in the U. S. that there is no comparison. An informed health care worker, she finds the medical care in the private sector here is not only far more affordable but as good as any she could obtain in Austin.

Wanda, also a widow who has lived here for many ears, has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. She too is getting her health care in the private sector where she will be getting a mastectomy. She says that the cost is the least of her worries. She is quite grateful that her doctors don’t insist on draining her bank account with chemotherapy that is of questionable value, before performing the necessary surgery. That’s far too common in the U. S.

John, another case study, had just had two root canals performed and is completely happy with the results. Again the cost was a fraction of what he would have incurred at home. My dentist in Seattle whose highly skilled work saved me from false teeth in my forties (work I never would have been able to afford if Pauline and I had not both had union benefits) warned us of the evils of Mexican dentistry when we told him of our plans to move down here. I suspect that his opinion in this matter is based upon that large body of widely known and altogether slanderous “facts” most Americans think they know about Mexico.

As resident aliens we could join the Mexican national health care plan for around $350 a year, but it is the consensus of better-off Mexicans and expats that although the public system is great, in many areas such as preventative medicine, it is too underfunded and therefore slow in treatment of non-contagious conditions. Nevertheless, unlike the U.S. private sector, medical costs are not ruinous even for those without insurance.

At ten-thirty we all went up on the roof of the hotel to watch the marching bands, the Miss Oaxaca floats, the drum and bugle corps, and the drill teams perform for the thousands of people who thronged the Zocalo. There a small detachment of police, armed with assault rifles, were peering down into the crowd as a fantastic fireworks display burst directly over our heads.