A decade ago, half of all Mexicans had no health insurance at all. Then the country’s Congress passed a bill to ensure health care for every Mexican without access to it. The goal was explicit: universal coverage.
By September, the government expects to have enrolled about 51 million people in the insurance plan it created six years ago — effectively reaching the target, at least on paper. The big question, critics contend, is whether all those people actually get the health care the government has promised.
Under the plan, children with leukemia have been cured, women receive breast cancer treatment, elderly people get cataract operations and people with H.I.V. are assured their drugs. Usually at no cost.
Even critics who argue that the government is failing to live up to the promise of universal health coverage acknowledge that Mexico’s program saves lives and protects families from falling into poverty in many cases of catastrophic illness.
But the task of covering so many people’s care, with a budget of about $12 billion this year, is enormous. Still, Salomón Chertorivski, who is in charge of the government’s system of social protection for health, believes it is possible.
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