It's good to see Mexico's doctors not denying much needed healthcare to Americans who are going there to get affordable treatment. Going to Mexico is a great idea for U.S. taxpayers who can't afford medical treatment in the U.S. or being denied health care coverage by their greedy insurers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090814/us_nm/us_usa_healthcare_mexico
As U.S. health row rages, many seek care in Mexico
By Tim Gaynor – Fri Aug 14, 1:13 am ET
NACO, Mexico (Reuters) – Retired police officer Bob Ritz has health insurance that covers his medical and dental care in the United States.
But every few months he drives from his home in Tombstone, Arizona, to this small town in northern Mexico to avoid the healthcare costs that aren't paid by insurance.
"I pay $400 a month for my health insurance, and it's still cheaper to come to Mexico," says Ritz, 60, as he stood outside a sun-bleached ******** in Naco, a few hours drive southeast of Phoenix.
President Barack Obama is locked in a bitter fight to overhaul U.S. healthcare, as he seeks to increase the number of Americans getting coverage and drive down costs of around $2.5 trillion a year.
Republican critics charge that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are seeking a government takeover of healthcare that will drive up the budget deficit.
With Washington bickering over how to reform the system and contain its spiraling costs, many Americans like Ritz simply head to Mexico to get care they can afford.
The total number making the trip is unclear. But a recent study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research estimated that nearly 1 million people from California alone seek medical, dental or ************ services in Mexico each year.
Some making the trek have little or no medical coverage. Others like Ritz are on fixed incomes and want to avoid so-called co-pays and deductibles charged by U.S. insurers on top of policies that routinely cost from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand each month.
"The very wealthy can afford whatever they want, the very poor get it through aid, but the working and the middle-class have to struggle to pay insurance," said Ritz, who worked as a police officer in Chicago for 28 years.
"I'm very lucky to live near enough to Mexico to get good healthcare at a reasonable price," he added.
BROKEN BONES AND BRONCHITIS
Healthcare reform is the flagship domestic policy drive of Obama's first year in office.
He wants coverage for around 46 million uninsured Americans and to rein in rising medical costs, and regulate insurers that already provide care to millions more.
Republican opponents say Obama's plan amounts to socialism by stealth and argue that its trillion-dollar price tag will hurt the economy as the United States remains mired in the worst recession in decades.
While the bitter row continues to rage at town hall meetings across the United States, signs of the U.S. system's failings are visible in Mexican border cities, where cut-price pharmacies, dental clinics and doctors' surgeries vie for business from Americans who can't afford treatment at home.
In Tijuana, where medical tourism from neighboring San Diego is big business, clinics offer operations ranging from cut-rate cosmetic procedures to hysterectomies and bariatric surgery to curb obesity.
"I waste up to four hours coming to an appointment, but it's worth it as we'll save thousands of dollars," said Beatriz Iturriaga, a 26-year-old ****** of two from Eastlake, south of San Diego, who paid $6,500 for bariatric surgery at a Tijuana clinic that would cost up to $40,000 stateside.
At the other end of the cost spectrum in Naco, Mexican physician Sixto de la Pena Cortes charges the 15 or so Americans that trek to his clinic-cum-******** each week $20 for a check-up -- the cost of an average co-pay in the United States.
"Most common (ailments) are bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach problems," said de la Pena Cortes, 62, who said he has also set broken bones and arranged for an appendix to be removed at a hospital in nearby Agua Prieta at a cost of around $2,000.
(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and Julian Cardona in Ciudad Juarez; editing by Eric Beech)
Until the U.S. has low cost, affordable or unisversal healthcare, uninsured and underinsured Americans should go to Mexico to get much needed medical treatment that is much more affordable than being treated in a U.S. hospital unless you're rich or work for the government
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=588
Need Health Care? Go to Mexico
By Robert Higgs on Nov 25, 2008 in Business, Economics, Healthcare, Insurance, Latin America, Trade
Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican strongman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, famously described his country’s situation by exclaiming, “¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!” (Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!) I cannot say whether Mexico is now any closer to God, but its proximity to the United States is definitely proving to be a godsend for many Americans in need of medical and dental care.
Medical tourism is a rapidly growing industry, estimated to bring in gross revenues now well in excess of $60 billion per year, and Mexico is a convenient destination for many Americans in need of pharmaceutical *****, dental work, and surgical procedures. Prices may be as much as two-thirds below those in the United States for comparable goods and services. The Los Angeles Times reports, for example, that at Los Algodones, a Mexican town of about 10,000 population on the border with California, “dental offices outnumber restaurants 49 to nine. Add in the 26 pharmacies, 20 optical shops and 14 physicians offices, and you’ve got something of a mecca of medicine.” Similar towns may be found here and there along the entire Mexican border, especially across from Texas.
U.S. hospital firms are now investing in the construction of new care facilities in Mexico, to serve Mexicans, to be sure, but also with an eye toward the norteamericanos who are expected to seek their services.
These developments are one of the many unanticipated consequences of the jerry-rigged interventionist nightmare known as the U.S. health care system, which is geared to soak up money from people with so-called health care insurance (more accurately described as prepaid health care, because insurance principles have little to do with how the policies are formulated or implemented). If, like me, you have no insurance to cover noncatastrophic health contingencies, you quickly discover that the pricing arrangements for medical care in this country savagely discriminate against those who pay out of their own pockets. (Insurers have made arrangements for the providers to accept much less than I must pay on my own account.) So, a huge potential market exists for cross-border health care. Of course, too, Medicare does not pay for dental work, so that situation also draws many elderly customers south of the border.
If the Obama administration moves in the direction it has indicated it will seek to move, toward even greater government intervention in, or perhaps complete takeover of, the U.S. health care system, look for the growth of the Mexican health care industry to become extremely rapid. As the United States has long been to Canadians (who seek to escape from the national health care system up north), Mexico may become to Americans, who will need a similar refuge from their government’s “compassion.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090814/us_nm/us_usa_healthcare_mexico
As U.S. health row rages, many seek care in Mexico
By Tim Gaynor – Fri Aug 14, 1:13 am ET
NACO, Mexico (Reuters) – Retired police officer Bob Ritz has health insurance that covers his medical and dental care in the United States.
But every few months he drives from his home in Tombstone, Arizona, to this small town in northern Mexico to avoid the healthcare costs that aren't paid by insurance.
"I pay $400 a month for my health insurance, and it's still cheaper to come to Mexico," says Ritz, 60, as he stood outside a sun-bleached ******** in Naco, a few hours drive southeast of Phoenix.
President Barack Obama is locked in a bitter fight to overhaul U.S. healthcare, as he seeks to increase the number of Americans getting coverage and drive down costs of around $2.5 trillion a year.
Republican critics charge that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are seeking a government takeover of healthcare that will drive up the budget deficit.
With Washington bickering over how to reform the system and contain its spiraling costs, many Americans like Ritz simply head to Mexico to get care they can afford.
The total number making the trip is unclear. But a recent study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research estimated that nearly 1 million people from California alone seek medical, dental or ************ services in Mexico each year.
Some making the trek have little or no medical coverage. Others like Ritz are on fixed incomes and want to avoid so-called co-pays and deductibles charged by U.S. insurers on top of policies that routinely cost from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand each month.
"The very wealthy can afford whatever they want, the very poor get it through aid, but the working and the middle-class have to struggle to pay insurance," said Ritz, who worked as a police officer in Chicago for 28 years.
"I'm very lucky to live near enough to Mexico to get good healthcare at a reasonable price," he added.
BROKEN BONES AND BRONCHITIS
Healthcare reform is the flagship domestic policy drive of Obama's first year in office.
He wants coverage for around 46 million uninsured Americans and to rein in rising medical costs, and regulate insurers that already provide care to millions more.
Republican opponents say Obama's plan amounts to socialism by stealth and argue that its trillion-dollar price tag will hurt the economy as the United States remains mired in the worst recession in decades.
While the bitter row continues to rage at town hall meetings across the United States, signs of the U.S. system's failings are visible in Mexican border cities, where cut-price pharmacies, dental clinics and doctors' surgeries vie for business from Americans who can't afford treatment at home.
In Tijuana, where medical tourism from neighboring San Diego is big business, clinics offer operations ranging from cut-rate cosmetic procedures to hysterectomies and bariatric surgery to curb obesity.
"I waste up to four hours coming to an appointment, but it's worth it as we'll save thousands of dollars," said Beatriz Iturriaga, a 26-year-old ****** of two from Eastlake, south of San Diego, who paid $6,500 for bariatric surgery at a Tijuana clinic that would cost up to $40,000 stateside.
At the other end of the cost spectrum in Naco, Mexican physician Sixto de la Pena Cortes charges the 15 or so Americans that trek to his clinic-cum-******** each week $20 for a check-up -- the cost of an average co-pay in the United States.
"Most common (ailments) are bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach problems," said de la Pena Cortes, 62, who said he has also set broken bones and arranged for an appendix to be removed at a hospital in nearby Agua Prieta at a cost of around $2,000.
(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and Julian Cardona in Ciudad Juarez; editing by Eric Beech)
Until the U.S. has low cost, affordable or unisversal healthcare, uninsured and underinsured Americans should go to Mexico to get much needed medical treatment that is much more affordable than being treated in a U.S. hospital unless you're rich or work for the government
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=588
Need Health Care? Go to Mexico
By Robert Higgs on Nov 25, 2008 in Business, Economics, Healthcare, Insurance, Latin America, Trade
Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican strongman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, famously described his country’s situation by exclaiming, “¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!” (Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!) I cannot say whether Mexico is now any closer to God, but its proximity to the United States is definitely proving to be a godsend for many Americans in need of medical and dental care.
Medical tourism is a rapidly growing industry, estimated to bring in gross revenues now well in excess of $60 billion per year, and Mexico is a convenient destination for many Americans in need of pharmaceutical *****, dental work, and surgical procedures. Prices may be as much as two-thirds below those in the United States for comparable goods and services. The Los Angeles Times reports, for example, that at Los Algodones, a Mexican town of about 10,000 population on the border with California, “dental offices outnumber restaurants 49 to nine. Add in the 26 pharmacies, 20 optical shops and 14 physicians offices, and you’ve got something of a mecca of medicine.” Similar towns may be found here and there along the entire Mexican border, especially across from Texas.
U.S. hospital firms are now investing in the construction of new care facilities in Mexico, to serve Mexicans, to be sure, but also with an eye toward the norteamericanos who are expected to seek their services.
These developments are one of the many unanticipated consequences of the jerry-rigged interventionist nightmare known as the U.S. health care system, which is geared to soak up money from people with so-called health care insurance (more accurately described as prepaid health care, because insurance principles have little to do with how the policies are formulated or implemented). If, like me, you have no insurance to cover noncatastrophic health contingencies, you quickly discover that the pricing arrangements for medical care in this country savagely discriminate against those who pay out of their own pockets. (Insurers have made arrangements for the providers to accept much less than I must pay on my own account.) So, a huge potential market exists for cross-border health care. Of course, too, Medicare does not pay for dental work, so that situation also draws many elderly customers south of the border.
If the Obama administration moves in the direction it has indicated it will seek to move, toward even greater government intervention in, or perhaps complete takeover of, the U.S. health care system, look for the growth of the Mexican health care industry to become extremely rapid. As the United States has long been to Canadians (who seek to escape from the national health care system up north), Mexico may become to Americans, who will need a similar refuge from their government’s “compassion.”
