Mexican Health Care: Case studies
 LATimes
Tijuana - The Serratos family of Brawley, Calif., couldn't afford insurance before her husband was hired three years ago at an Imperial Valley farm. In years past, the family would seek treatment only in emergency rooms. Now, their Access Baja plan provides them access to Mexicali doctors, and in emergency situations, U.S. doctors. The family feels they can take advantage of the best from both countries.
Earlier this year, their son, 3-year-old Saul, almost drowned in a pool accident and had to be airlifted to San Diego.
U.S. doctors, said Rosalia Serratos, saved her son's life.
But for routine care she prefers taking her son and 9-year-old daughter to Mexicali 25 miles away, where she says the clinics have shorter waits and more attentive doctors."I like the way they treated my son in San Diego."
"They never left him alone" said Serratos, referring to her son's near-drowning incident. But for regular care, she added, "I like going to Mexico." Jose Rangel, a San Diego construction worker, said finding a good doctor to treat his lower back pain was a problem in both countries.
In California, he would wait weeks, he said, for an appointment that only lasted a few minutes. The doctors, he said, prescribed an assortment of drugs that only temporarily eased the pain.
In Mexico, the first physician he saw took X-rays and recommended surgery, but Rangel didn't trust him because he didn't take time to explain why.
"In Mexico, there are bad doctors just like here," said Rangel, whose wife and two children also visit Mexican doctors. "It's like everything else. It's all about getting a good recommendation." Rangel ended up seeing Dr. Felipe Tovar Vasquez, a slim, middle-aged back specialist for the Access Baja plan who extracted Rangel's herniated disc and fused two vertebral bones. The operation was so successful that Rangel recommended the same procedure and doctor to his brother.
"I ended up well. Thank God. I was walking two days after the surgery," said Rangel, who now can hoist cabinets painlessly at his job.
Tovar, a graduate of Mexico City's prestigious Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, said Rangel's is one of hundreds of people he has helped. His training and skills, he said, are the equal of U.S. doctors.
The only difference, he said, is "a lot of money." |
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Health & Beauty | August 2005 
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