If you plan to relocate permanently to Mexico for either employment, family reasons, or retirement purposes, the public Mexican health insurance scheme IMSS must be joined. Working in a Mexican company will automatically enroll you and deduct contributions directly from your salary; as an independent expat or self-employed professional you can also join and pay your own contribution through bank account.
Mexican health insurance stands out from previous state-sponsored schemes in that it provides access to basic healthcare services and medicines without regard to employment status or wealth; this is a tremendous improvement compared to past arrangements which excluded millions and required payment of an access fee in order to access them.
IMSS-Bienestar program is currently facing numerous difficulties, however. A lack of funds is impeding efforts to recruit more doctors, while there are concerns that its structure could become bureaucratic and burdensome for users. Furthermore, due to COVID-19 pandemic’s reduced public healthcare use it has only compounded shortages in medicines.
Even with all its challenges, Seguro Popular’s implementation has produced positive health indicators. These include maternal care rates, childhood vaccination rates and cervical cancer screening rates – though it remains too soon to tell whether these improvements are primarily the result of universal coverage and how one of its original goals – coordination and integration across various systems – can best be accomplished.
Though Mexico has started to implement some of its pledges, it remains to be seen if they will deliver on universal health care as promised. Corruption, lack of security for health workers and inefficient systems remain hurdles to its implementation.
Future success of Mexico’s healthcare system relies heavily on addressing these issues; until then, many residents will rely on private medical insurance policies as their primary form of medical coverage. There are various online health insurance comparison sites available to assist in finding suitable Mexico expat health insurance for your needs, including policies that cover both countries. Costs will depend on several factors, including age and health history as well as which policy type you select. Many insurance providers also provide car and travel coverage; click here for more details about them. The authors wish to extend their appreciation and thanks to the Mexican Institute of Statistics for their assistance with this article, as well as to UK NIHR Research for Global Health programme for funding this work. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position or approval of any funder. No role was played by them in designing or conducting this study, collecting, analyzing, or interpreting data, writing a report, or creating this editorial.