Mexico Will Have a First-Class Public Health System: AMLO

On Dec. 22, 2022, during his morning conference, President López Obrador assured that by mid-2023, Mexico will have one of the best public health systems in the world. Nonetheless, according to analysts, this goal is far from being achieved.

During the morning conference held in Chetumal, López Obrador said that the lack of medical specialists was being addressed by bringing them from abroad. “The school system rejected students at public universities, which caused a shortage of general practitioners. In this scenario Cuba stood in solidarity with Mexico and sent over 500 specialists to tackle this problem,” he said.

López Obrador said that this issue traces back to past administrations, whose goal was to privatize health and education, turning them into a privilege rather than a right. He pointed out that his plan for 2023 focuses on fixing health centers, medical units and hospitals. This plan has already begun in Nayarit, Colima, Tlaxcala, Baja California Sur, Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Veracruz, Guerrero and Campeche.

In early 2022, López Obrador had already promised that by the end of the year, Mexico would be ready to offer quality care and free medicines for all. He emphasized this by saying that the Mexican healthcare system would level that of Denmark, Canada and the UK’s, which raised criticism and doubts among healthcare providers.

As we face the end of 2022, analysts point out it is virtually impossible to achieve this idyllic health system in the remaining two years of López Obrador’s administration. Carolina Gómez, public health specialist, underscored that far from increasing the health budget, the money allocated to this sector has been trimmed since 2018. "The president is wrong to brag about a health system equivalent to those in Europe. We cannot even count on basic vaccines," she lamented.

Xavier Tello, Surgeon and Public Health Analyst, said that in addition to the budget deficit, the main problem with López Obrador’s promise is the ignorance on how European health systems work. According to Tello, these systems have an enormous public-private participation, which is not compatible with the principles of López Obrador’s administration. In many cases, like the UK or Canada, the government subrogates hospitals and specialist care to private actors. Moreover, in some countries like Spain, prescriptions are filled by private pharmacies, with brand-name medicines that are then reimbursed to the manufacturer. Most importantly, Tello emphasized that for the most part, people in these countries are required to pay over 60 percent of income tax, something impossible for the Mexican population.