Abstract
This study examines the geo-political activities of interest groups, governments and multinational corporations involved in an initiative to extend Medicare to U.S. retirees residing in Mexico. If the initiative to change the current Medicare policy succeeds, the relocation of Medicare-eligible populations from the U.S. to Mexico is likely to increase; the U.S. is expected to gain cost-savings for taxpayers on Medicare; Mexico can develop senior-housing and options for long-term care it currently lacks; and foreign-led multinational corporations will increase their profits and dominance, fostering even more privatization in Mexico’s health care sector. By exploring new issues about retirement migration and health this study seeks to gain knowledge about the phenomena in a number of areas. First, the retirement migration of North Americans to Latin America is an under-studied phenomenon in the fields of social gerontology, migration research, and health policy studies. Second, the Medicare in Mexico initiative is even less well-known among health policy scholars than the retirement migration phenomenon into Mexico. Yet this initiative is inherently international in scope and involves a number of US-based institutions and interest groups actively promoting the project from within Mexico. Thus, the initiative has important geo-political and socio-economic implications for reforming health care systems in the U.S. and Mexico.
Highlights
Note: Warner, David C., Getting What You Paid For: Extending Medicare to Eligible Beneficiaries in Mexico, U.S.Mexican Policy Studies Program, report No 10
Medicare-eligible retirees are required to return to the U.S to receive medical care, requiring additional costs to recipients and accomplishing very little to reduce health care costs in the U.S if Medicare policy were modified to allow Medicare-eligible retirees to reimburse the medical care received in Mexico, where costs are often 30% to 70% less than in the U.S, both expatriate retirees and the U.S would benefit
Jasso-Aguilar, Waitzkin and Landwehr describe the intervention of International Financing Institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provided loans to Mexico contingent upon implementing major health care reforms that went into effect in 1997, favoring US-based managed-care organizations (MCOs) by allowing them to compete for public healthcare clients and granting them even greater access to Mexican Social Security funds
Summary
The drive to reform Medicare policy extending its cover to retired U.S citizens living in Mexico emerged in the early 1990s among health policy scholars who promoted the idea as a cost-reduction plan for U.S taxpayers. U.S retirement migration into Mexico is on the rise, Medicare, unlike Social Security benefits, is not portable to overseas territories. Dominant US-based multinational corporations (MNCs) played influential roles in shaping Mexican health care reforms in 1997.4 A model for analyzing the activities of these stakeholder organizations in the Medicare in Mexico initiative is derived from a study by Jasso-Aguilar, Waitzkin and Landwehr in 2004. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are motivated to find prime economic opportunities in regions that almost guarantee greater profits Their overall global strategy is to depart a country when declining profits signal waning market conditions, simultaneously transforming into multinational organizations that enter into new global markets providing greater profits and fewer restrictions.. Jasso-Aguilar, Waitzkin and Landwehr describe the intervention of International Financing Institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provided loans to Mexico contingent upon implementing major health care reforms that went into effect in 1997, favoring US-based MCOs by allowing them to compete for public healthcare clients and granting them even greater access to Mexican Social Security funds. According to Homedes and Ugalde, the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 did little to foster binational collaboration between the different health care systems, but it greatly reduced trade barriers that initially facilitated partnerships between US-based MCOs and Mexican health care providers, leading to their increased dominance in the Mexican health care industry today. Second, Jasso-Aguilar, Waitzkin and Landwehr describe the intervention of International Financing Institutions (IFIs), such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provided loans to Mexico contingent upon implementing major health care reforms that went into effect in 1997, favoring US-based MCOs by allowing them to compete for public healthcare clients and granting them even greater access to Mexican Social Security funds.
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