IMSS, Seguro Popular and Expats

It has beeen stated Seguro Popular and the IMSS are not doing well and are in financial crisis. That the Seguro Popular is "only" for the poor. That they are under budgeted, and has overall a lack of resources such as staff, medicine, diagnostic equipment. These and other claims may have been correct a decade or more ago but today they are not. Seguro Popular has about 50,000,000 members and IMSS about 59,000,000 members now.

The contributions to IMSS from employers and self insured is up significantly from only a few years ago. The new tax laws have seen increases in federal revenues and continues to grow. The federal government has invested billions of dollars into these 2 socialized medicine systems and any foreigner with legal resident status is invited to join.

The IMSS has exclusions for some pre-existing chronic medical conditons and waiting periods for others, The Seguro Popuar does not have these exclusions or waiting periods and invites anyone to join if you are not a member of any other Mexican socialized medicine plan.

Seguro Popular started in 1974 for the poor and outreaching villiages or towns and rural areas where it was hard to get any medical treatment but has envolved into a system where any family not able to pay or join the IMSS for reasons that are obvious, no regular employment,  owners of businesses not willing to contribute to the IMSS on employees behalf, ,the  rural poor, etc. The federal government has been cracking down and investigating some of these employers and forcing them to follow the law lately and this is continuing. This is one of the reasons IMSS enrollment is sharply increasing. Seguro Popular has been soliciting members to join and has a no turn away policy and only about 2 percent pay an annual renewal fee. The rest pay nothing per family.

The average family who can and do join the IMMS pay about $3400.00 pesos per year or their employer pays it. Both plans have no co-payments for anything including medicines.

Compared to all the  private medical insurance plans available in Mexico where co-payment per treatment can be as high as $10,000 to $30,000 pesos and yearly fees as high as $5,000 USD per year with about a $10,000 peso co-pay for people 60 or older plus yearly enrollment fees go up substantially every year or two and become financially very difficult to maintain for some retirees when in their 70s and 80s or 90s, a good reason not to invest in these plans in the first place, many older foreigner are now investigating Mexico´s socialized medicine as an option.