Newsletter
Would You Use Your Medicare in Mexico?
Date: 11/10/2009By Dan Prescher
November 10, 2009 -- If you could use your Medicare in Mexico, would you?
Consider this – health care in Mexico costs less than a third what it does in the U.S. and is often provided by US-trained doctors.
That could equal saving not only for patients, but for the Medicare program itself, according to Paul Crist, founder of Americans for Medicare in Mexico.
Crist owns a resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and once served as an aide to former U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes. He says that, although 200,000 of the estimated one million Americans living in Mexico are eligible for Medicare coverage, many of them are forced to return to the States to get covered treatment.
Which doesn’t make much sense when you consider that a 2007 study by the University of Texas showed that a $63,000 hip replacement in the U.S. can cost $12,000 in a modern Mexican facility, or that a $149,000 heart bypass procedure in the U.S. can cost just $21,000 south of the border.
Crist and his organization have been campaigning for Medicare reforms to let U.S. citizens use their Medicare in Mexico, but the health care debate has monopolized the news cycle, overshadowing his efforts. But he and other groups of U.S. expats like the Association of American Residents Overseas (AARO) are maintaining the pressure on Congress through letter-writing and informational campaigns.
Powerful U.S. health care groups resist extending Medicare coverage outside the U.S. because they fear it will lead to outsourcing of health care to even less expensive markets like Eastern Europe and China, taking a huge bite out of U.S health industry profits.
But thousands of Americans are already heading for Mexico either full or part-time to take advantage not only of lower health care costs, but lower property taxes and general cost of living as well.
"Many in the baby-boomer generation have seen their retirement savings disappear and it is not likely those funds will be built back up quickly," says Crist. "The opportunity to provide services to Americans at much lower cost outside the U.S. border is enormous. This is pushing even private insurers to explore coverage options outside of the U.S., and Medicare will certainly be a part of this globalization, sooner or later.”