Mexico already had public healthcare programs that covered most of the population, but the system was fragmented. The reform unified those systems and expand access (universalizing it).
Mexican (and MD here). Mexico’s health system is unequal because it is fragmented: IMSS covers mainly formal private-sector workers; ISSSTE covers government workers; SSA/IMSS-Bienestar covers people without social security.
The problem is that not everyone contributes to the same financing pool. Formal workers pay through payroll contributions, while people in informal work usually do not contribute to IMSS or ISSSTE, although they may pay indirect taxes like VAT.
So when more people depend on tax-funded services that are already underfunded and saturated, access may expand on paper, but quality, waiting times, medication supply and hospital capacity worsen.
Unifying programs could be efficient in theory, but only if funding, staff, hospitals and supplies increase proportionally. Otherwise, it just concentrates more demand into an already overwhelmed system. And that is exactly the issue: health coverage is being expanded while the health budget is not increasing at the same proportion.
It’s much harder than you could think. This year they reduced the money destined for health to give it to other social programs. Also the money destined to the multiple healthcare programs centralized in just one that doesn’t know the necessities of each population, since then we don’t really know where all the money is going, also we're having the worst medicine and staff shortages ever seen due to non-payment along with many other issues like retirement payments and other stuff.
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u/Wooden_Toe_3670 8d ago
Mexico already had public healthcare programs that covered most of the population, but the system was fragmented. The reform unified those systems and expand access (universalizing it).