North Americans Benefit as Mexico Medicine Sheds Its Third-World Stigma Keith Rosenblum - Inside Tucson Business
go to original June 8, 2013

A decision by Mexico's Congress this year to offer free health care is proving popular with both Mexicans and foreigners. Many US and Canadian retirees are moving to the country in order to take advantage of the lower costs and easy availability of quality medical care. Al Jazeera's Rachel Levin reports from the town of San Miguel Allende. (AlJazeeraEnglish)

In a not-so-distant Mexico, Americans visiting this country did anything to avoid contact with the medical system.

We popped pills, called our U.S. doctors, postponed treatment or rushed back. So entrenched was our fear of Mexican medicine that an entire air-evacuation industry came into existence to save the imperiled with flights to Tucson, San Diego, El Paso or Houston.

The flip-side of that equation applied, too. Any sick Mexican with a passport and the funds to travel recited the phrase, “Voy a curarme al otro lado,” meaning, “I’m going to get healed in the U.S.” — and off he or she went.

What a difference a generation makes.

Today, Americans are sitting in waiting rooms at doctors’ offices and in hospitals in Mexico. Americans are crossing the border in legions on day-trips to see dentists and doctors in border cities. And it is the American now seeking out bilingual and trilingual Mexican surgeons, many of whom were trained in the U.S. or Europe and are performing operations with the same — or superior — rates of success at prices one-third of those at home.

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