Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum plans to guarantee all 130 million Mexicans universal healthcare. She is creating one Universal Health Service for everyone in Mexico, beginning next year, writes Stephen Prager for Common Dreams. Why can’t our government do the same?
Sheinbaum’s goal is to ensure every Mexican can get whatever care they need by the time she leaves office in 2030. Sheinbaum’s reforms will begin with coverage of everyone’s emergency care and continued care at no cost. By the end of 2027, all Mexicans will have coverage for radiotherapy, laboratory tests, and imaging studies. In 2028, all Mexicans will all have drug and hospital coverage.
Sheinbaum plans to pay for the coverage of millions more uninsured Mexicans through appropriation of a larger health care budget and administrative savings from uniting Mexico’s health services into one program, reducing bureaucracy. In sharp contrast, President Trump’s 2025 law cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid is projected to leave nearly 12 million more Americans uninsured and drive up health care costs for another 20 million Americans.
In the US, the big insurers are blocking reform, even though they admit that they can’t bring down costs and are keeping people from getting needed care. As former Cigna executive, Wendell Potter, says, “Due to the stranglehold Big Insurance has on too many politicians in this country, instead of expanding care and lowering costs, we are simply helping Big Insurance make more and more money. It is totally backwards.”
Potter adds that Medicare for All should be our north star. We must first “break up Big Insurance’s stranglehold on Washington.”
Here’s more from Just Care:
- French government guarantees low-cost health care; US relies on inflationary marketplace
- How other wealthy countries deliver superior health care coverage to the US
- How does Taiwan’s health care system work?
- In Germany, for patients, new drugs cost the same as older drugs
- Japanese test technology to improve health of older adults
