qtla9111 wrote:MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Seguro Popular
They moved me into a room that had a comatose patient. Breathing through tubes. Sounded like a 5-year old sucking up the last bits of a soda through a straw. Room temp was in the nineties.
No television. Bed was not electric. They changed sheets and thin blanket once during an eleven day stay. View out the 5th story window was rooftops. Zero books or magazines Ingles or Español.
Problem was a broken wrist, arm. So no stethoscopes nor BP measurements although I needed them.
Hospital policy ZERO medication unless it is administered intravenously. Need medicines? Patient has to buy it in person or someone he knows. The only farmacia charged me FIVE DOLLARS for 10 tablets of generic tylenol, and Fourteen dollars for 50 glibenclamida tablets. Glyburide. I spent twenty five dollars for 50 Tylenol, plus a pricey tip for a hospital worker to run across the street to the pharmacy. If you think that pharmacy did not pay for rights of exclusivity you need a brain doctor. There were NO other pharmacies within a 5 block radius. Near downtown....gimmee a break...
Stew with some kind of animal product. A leaf of lettuce, translucent thin slice of tomato. Plain sticky rice. All at room temperature. Stack of chewy dry tortillas with edges that snapped off. Instant Nescafe.
To avoid boredom insanity, I would grab a stool and sit by the door. Some of the nurses (male) would spare a minute and chat Three or four times a day.
The room mate stopped gurgling I guess when I was sitting on the stool. Three or four green smocked nurses came and rolled him up in a bed sheet and carried him out of the room and placed the body on a gurney. The next neighbor talked. But the very same afternoon the surgeon scheduled me.
There are ZERO (yes that means 0.000000) medications for pain. No morphine, no oxycodone ZERO codeine. Get used to it -- it's Mexico.
After surgery I was wheeled down to the office and then engaged in a six hour ordeal with social services office over a two thousand dollar+ cash only hospital bill. They finally chopped 8 days of stay because it was the overloaded surgeon that caused the delay.
DATE 08/04/2011 to 08/14/2011
Place LA PAZ BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR
HOSPITAL, SEGURO POPULAR
I was delayed from continuing north because of a delay in renters vacating a house in California. So I holed-up 50 miles to the south of the ferry terminal for 40 days and had an Adirondack made in USA chair leg snap and pitch me over backward. I had doctor appointments in the USA for spine and cataracts. I had let my IMSS coverage lapse because I did not want to pay the three hundred dollars the week before I departed home. I would take a chance a go six-weeks without Mexican coverage.
Not the money outlay. It's the experience that sticks with me. The bill for fixing the MEXICAN TEMPORARY SET BONE PATCH was $55,000 at a hand specialist surgeon followed by two months of therapy. I have regained about forty percent use of the hand which is nobody's fault.
My memory of Mexican medical facilities seems to fall considerably short of other people's glowing accounts.
I have been hospitalized in the USA at six different medical centers and the difference between them and two Mexican hospitals could not be more radical.
Que sera sera...better than no medical care.
You get what you pay for. Remember that Seguro Popular is for the poverty stricken, non-registered taxpayer, who does not have IMSS, ISSTE or any of its affiliates (ISSTELEON-ISSTE Nuevo Leon). There is a list of over 250 medical procedures that are covered under Seguro Popular. Maximum cost is $600 U.S. per year, which is $50 U.S. per month.
Table of Procedures Covered By Seguro Popular
Don't expect any miracles.
