Inequalities in Mexico Health System
Inequalities in Mexico HS
Despite the fact that life expectancy at birth in Mexico has improved from forty-two years in 1940 to seventy-three in 2000, major inequalities persist in health and access to health care. The Mexican health care system has evolved into a series of disjointed subsystems that are incapable of delivering universal health insurance.
Fragmentation and administrative complexity are often described as among the greatest weaknesses of the health system in the United States, especially in comparison with other countries such as Canada, our neighbor to the north.
The result is that half of Mexico’s 100 million citizens are uninsured and more than half of the country’s annual health spending is out of pocket. The incentives in this balkanized system tend to reinforce the entrenchment of its several disjointed sectors, impeding efforts to improve performance. Disparities in access and outcomes—a tenfold difference in infant mortality rates between the poorest parts of the country and the richest, for example—make the U.S. system seem equitable in contrast. The employment-based portion of the Mexican system is particularly problematic, since workers in some sectors of the economy enjoy a hybrid public-private system of coverage, while many others are uninsured and must depend on an uneven system of public clinics. Thecomprehensive federal funding of a core package of services across all social groups must be the basis of universal health insurance.”
Throughout the world, inequity in health status has fallen faster than would be predicted based on changes in economic inequity.3 This general improvement has many causes, including the diffusion of knowledge about safer health behavior (such as that related to water quality, sanitation, nutrition, and safer sex) and the diffusion of inexpensive, effective technologies (most importantly, vaccination and oral rehydration therapy, or ORT). Mexico has one of the world’s most successful
Despite the fact that life expectancy at birth in Mexico has improved from forty-two years in 1940 to seventy-three in 2000, major inequalities persist in health and access to health care. The Mexican health care system has evolved into a series of disjointed subsystems that are incapable of delivering universal health insurance.
Fragmentation and administrative complexity are often described as among the greatest weaknesses of the health system in the United States, especially in comparison with other countries such as Canada, our neighbor to the north.
The result is that half of Mexico’s 100 million citizens are uninsured and more than half of the country’s annual health spending is out of pocket. The incentives in this balkanized system tend to reinforce the entrenchment of its several disjointed sectors, impeding efforts to improve performance. Disparities in access and outcomes—a tenfold difference in infant mortality rates between the poorest parts of the country and the richest, for example—make the U.S. system seem equitable in contrast. The employment-based portion of the Mexican system is particularly problematic, since workers in some sectors of the economy enjoy a hybrid public-private system of coverage, while many others are uninsured and must depend on an uneven system of public clinics. Thecomprehensive federal funding of a core package of services across all social groups must be the basis of universal health insurance.”
Throughout the world, inequity in health status has fallen faster than would be predicted based on changes in economic inequity.3 This general improvement has many causes, including the diffusion of knowledge about safer health behavior (such as that related to water quality, sanitation, nutrition, and safer sex) and the diffusion of inexpensive, effective technologies (most importantly, vaccination and oral rehydration therapy, or ORT). Mexico has one of the world’s most successful