Health care for foreigners

John H. Richardson, in Esquire Magazine, interviews Rudy Rupac of Planet Hospital, a U.S. travel company specializing in making travel arrangements for U.S. citizens that can’t afford medical care at home.

“If you are purposely going abroad for medical care, and paying to do so, obviously they’re going to treat you like royalty,” [Rudy] Rupak told me. “If, on the other hand, you’re in an emergency situation, some countries will do a wallet biopsy.”

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There’s another reason why Americans go to Mexico for the health care they’re so eager to deny to Mexicans who come to America: Mexico has a national health plan. “Actually, they have two of them,” Rupak told me. “One for everybody, and another for government and military and some corporate. And also private insurance for the wealthy.” So Mexican health care is cheaper in general, since the public plan gives so much economic competition to the private plans — and also because the public system siphons off so many poor people and leaves the fancy plans as lean and mean as they want to be. Most private hospitals in Mexico don’t even have an emergency room, for example, because that’s where hospitals lose the most money. They can do this because there are always public hospitals that are required to take in everyone. That wouldn’t work in the U.S. because there are so few public hospitals — and still millions more people without insurance. And no matter how passionate every good American claims to be when it comes to laissez faire and the free market, it’s just not cool to have too many people bleeding to death on the sidewalks. Even illegal Mexicans. It’s lousy for property values, at the very least.