The LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas is investigating whether Mexican-born immigrants to the United States would benefit from receiving Medicare coverage while in Mexico. A group of researchers would like to survey those who wish to retire in Mexico, have retired there or return there for periods of time. If this applies to you or someone close to you, please click on a link below to take the online survey. It is offered in both English and Spanish.
If you would like to preview the survey before choosing to participate, please select the hardcopy link.
Hard Copy Links
History/Background
The number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, both native and foreign-born, who are moving to Mexico when they retire has increased over the past decade. The reasons that people are choosing to live in Mexico include the lower cost of living, temperate climate, culture, family, and proximity to the United States. Communities of American retirees are developing across Mexico, and Mexicans who have spent a substantial amount of time working in the United States are often returning to their communities of origin. Because Medicare covers health care outside of the United States only in rare cases, many beneficiaries who retire to Mexico must travel to the United States to receive care. Without access to their Medicare benefits, these retirees are more vulnerable to the potentially devastating financial consequences of inadequate health care coverage. As the demography in the United States changes and more Americans retire in Mexico, government-sponsored health care coverage for U.S. retirees should examine options to adapt to the needs of its beneficiaries.
It is important to many elderly people that emergency care be covered. Visitors to Mexico who have Medicare through an HMO or with a Medigap supplemental insurance plan may be covered through the first 60 days that they are out of the country. But those who retire to Mexico or do not have these supplemental plans are not eligible for such coverage.
Dr. David C. Warner, a professor at the LBJ School, is researching possible ways of extending coverage to Medicare beneficiaries who are living at least part of the year in Mexico. In 1993, the fourth policy report of the U.S.-Mexican Policy Studies Program Series, Health Care Across the Border: The Experience of U.S. Citizens in Mexico, was published. This report was followed by numerous publications on U.S.-Mexico health care issues, including the 1998 report Getting What You Paid For: Extending Medicare to Eligible Beneficiaries in Mexico. This project included the administration of a survey to U.S. retirees in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Baja California Norte. The LBJ School held conferences in 1999 and 2007 to discuss developing a research and demonstration project to analyze the feasibility of extending Medicare benefits to eligible retirees in Mexico.
2006 - 2007 Research
From 2006 to 2007, more than 1,000 people were surveyed as part of a study led by Dr. David Warner that focused on the use of health care services by Americans who had retired in Mexican communities primarily made up of older Americans and Canadians. The findings were presented at a March 2007 conference at the University of Texas. Also discussed were retirement trends, retirement community development projects in Mexico and public and private initiatives to certify the quality of physicians and hospitals.
In recent years, the Mexican government has been working towards further standardizing health professionals' qualifications and regulating medical facilities. Also, private health insurance carriers in the U.S. have created products targeted to transnational populations that cover care on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. These trends indicate that the infrastructure is developing to support the portability of Medicare benefits to Mexico.
2007 Conference
- Conference Agenda (pdf document)
- Medicare in Mexico: Innovating for Fairness and Cost Savings (pdf document)
2009 - 2010 Research
Now, researchers at UT-Austin are investigating whether providing Medicare coverage in Mexico would influence the retirement decisions of people who were born in Mexico and qualify for the coverage. The researchers believe that many people who retire to Mexico travel back to the United States for health care so they can use their Medicare benefits. The researchers also believe that many other people choose not to retire to Mexico because of a lack of access to affordable, high-quality emergency health care.
Because of lower health care costs in Mexico, it is likely that extending Medicare coverage there would reduce expenses to the U.S. government and improve the well-being of retirees. Because the people who would benefit from this change are not concentrated in one area, a challenge for proponents of this plan is identifying which members of Congress to seek out to support a pilot program. Our anonymous online survey will help this effort by giving researchers a better idea of how many people would prefer to return to Mexico if Medicare could be used there.
Objective
For Medicare benefits to be offered in Mexico, a series of steps must be taken. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is authorized to conduct and sponsor demonstration projects to test and measure the effect of potential program changes. However, it is not authorized to do so internationally. Thus, congressional approval would be needed for any pilot project in Mexico. The UT researchers plan to draft a proposal for such a project that would evaluate the effect of limited Medicare coverage, possibly only for emergency care, in Mexico.
This Web site provides information on current Medicare policy pertaining to receiving care abroad. It also explains the structure of the proposed research and demonstration project and provides additional resources for information on health care in Mexico, Medicare and cross-border health insurance.
Links
- Home
- About Medicare
- Research and Demonstration Project Design
- Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Extending Medicare Benefits
- Medical Care and Facilities in Mexico
- Additional Resources