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MX vs UK vs US for older citizens. [1]

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Date: 2023-10-18  

Today I went to the Centro para Adultos Meyor in our Pueblo Magico town some 35 minutes drive from the big city (on a good day). My wife is beginning rehab there having had a hip replaced. I went along with her because the old geezers get together on Thursday mornings to play dominoes and then everyone eats lunch. My wife can get her rehab session and then eat lunch too. There’s a swimming pool.

Dear American reader, please steel yourself. Dear British reader, stiff upper lip please. When I tell you that, argh, SOCIALISM is involved at some level! The centre was built and financed with public funds. Our property taxes. As for the cost… including lunch, it is $MXN 50 or roughly $US 2.75. In case you might be wondering about property taxes, they are about a quarter of the city’s $$.

The hospital where I had heart bypass surgery.

As north of a million Americans and Canadians know, Mexico can be ideal for retirees, and one of the reasons is that older people are simply far better treated by society.

Another example of this is the Bienestar pension granted to those over 65 years of age. Paid to everyone. And of course healthcare is free, including medication, scans, etc.

In the UK healthcare is also free, and used to be better (probably) than the average Mexican hospital. Now though, ruined by thirteen years of deliberate government neglect, it is but a wreck.

The Tories want to make a fast buck for themselves and their cronies by first wrecking the NHS, then bringing in American private healthcare companies to run it. Spitefully, the British government freezes the pensions of many of us emigrants. And as for end-of-life care, heaven help the poor old sod condemned to “live” in a UK “Care” home.

Since I haven’t had the misfortune to be old in the US, I have no direct experience (thank Dog) but a close friend has. He’s a Vietnam Vet so he gets his healthcare from the VA.

Then one day he had a heart attack. The ambulance arrived quickly; his situation dire. They told him that if they took him to the VA, through traffic, he wasn’t going to make it. He’d die before they arrived. But the nearby expert private hospital was his best bet if he wanted to stay alive.

With him lapsing in and out of consciousness, his wife chose the private hospital, which took him straight into surgery for a quadruple heart bypass. He made it. Then he got the bill for $270,000 plus change.

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