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 Health care is of course, a major consideration when baby boomers are considering relocation, particularly to a foreign country. There are many reasons why Mexico was selected by International Living as the number one retirement destination two years in a row. One of those reasons is the excellent, yet very accessible health care system. Mexican physicians are trained to the same standards as in the US, hospitals and clinics are clean and modern, a full range of treatments and therapies are available and services and medicines are of the same high-quality and amazingly inexpensive. In fact, it makes one wonder why a rich, sophisticated country like the US can’t figure out how to deliver such excellent care at reasonable prices.
The health care system in Mexico is a combination of public and private programs. On the public side is significantly IMSS. It is the government provided healthcare vehicle and is surprisingly good, considering that the ‘all-inclusive’ coverage costs less than $30 per month and any Mexican resident can qualify for it, even foreigners.
The coverage is quite broad and operates like an American HMO: it includes consultations, tests, hospitalization, surgery, medicines, even basic dental and optical as long as you use the ‘in-system’ practitioners.
No government system is perfect and IMSS is no exception. Details can be obtained at the IMSS website (http://www.imss.gob.mx/english. ). In our PV Discovery Week seminar, our healthcare expert guest speaker will be happy to help you learn more about your public and private options.
Many of the health care practitioners in Mexico are trained in western countries like the United States. Many more attend the excellent universities in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Most of these Mexican physicians even make house calls! Of course there are good doctors and bad doctors everywhere, regardless of training or where they practice, but when a northerner expresses bias against Mexican healthcare and physicians in general, it is completely unwarranted and they just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Since medical treatment is just as good, and considerably less expensive than north of the border, many North Americans travel to Mexico for dental work and elective surgeries. Pharmaceuticals are widely available at prices quite a bit lower than those in Canada or in the United States. In fact, it is so easy and cheap to get your prescriptions filled in Mexico (even without a prescription), that now the US customs agents are screening people re-entering the US from Mexico to make sure that you’re not bringing medicines back home from vacation (big brother making sure you’re not taking money out of the pockets of the powerful US medical industry).
You could expect that medical care in Mexico would be as good or better and considerably less expensive than anywhere in the US. Here’s a sampling of some common medical costs:
Primary Care Physician or Specialist office visit: $25-35
Laboratory tests: 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost for the same service in the US
Overnight stay in a private hospital room: $30-45
Prescription medicines: 1/2 to 2/3 of the cost in the US
Dental visit with teeth cleaning: $30-40
Visit to a neighborhood emergency clinic, resulting in several stitches: $8
Full hip replacement, including all consultations, medicines and post surgical care: $12,000
Amazingly, health insurance is just as economical as so many other things in Mexico. There are many options available, including international plans that cover you regardless of where in the world you require treatment.
Currently, the process of dealing with US Medicare reimbursement is a bit clunky, but there are currently about 800,000 American expats in Mexico pushing for a streamlined process for Medicare reimbursement of Mexican medical treatment, including a lobbying group (http://www.medicareinmexico.org/. ), working to demonstrate the importance of extending benefits to expats and the substantial economy of doing so.
For more information on all of the healthcare issues that you need to consider before your relocation to paradise, attend the Healthcare Matters seminar in our next PV Discovery Week. A healthcare practitioner will make a comprehensive presentation and be available to answer all of your specific questions. The more you learn about living in Puerto Vallarta, the more you’ll come to the same conclusion as many thousands of other expats and decide that this is not only paradise, but an affordable paradise with few compromises.
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