Mexico’s Failing Healthcare System: The Past and Present of Healthcare and Public Health in Mexico

Abstract

It is hard to understand why some areas within Mexico show some of the hemisphere’s worst health metrics, given that Mexico is one of the most economically advanced nations within the Latin American and Caribbean region (LAC). The health situation within Mexico is very uneven, with generally better overall health conditions in the industrialized north of Mexico and considerably worse in the regions where Indigenous people make their homes. This essay seeks to explain why health conditions remain so unimproved in parts of Mexico and for parts of the population, finding the roots for much of the problem in Mexico’s history and in its highly fragmented medical system. Mexico’s healthcare system, once the signature achievement of social progress over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, has ironically come to represent the largest obstacle to much-needed reform. Mexico’s present system is impossibly convoluted, frustrating to access, and leaves most Mexicans shut out. As such, the Mexican health system provides an excellent example for developing societies of how not to organize the provisioning of public healthcare.