Mexico Health Care Issues Essay

Mexico has replaced United States as the most obese country in the Western Hemisphere. The problem of obesity in Mexico has become a global public health challenge and was accepted by the World Health Organization as such in 1997.

Throughout the last three decades, increasing numbers of Asians have migrated to Canada from all over the Asian continent. Currently, 44% of the Vancouver area population is of Asian descent (Statistics Canada, 2001). Immigrants commonly occupy skilled job positions that the host nation is unable to fill with its own citizens, and thus they offer many advantages to their receiving country. In a nation with a declining birthrate, such as Canada, their contribution can play a major role on multiple levels. The immigrants themselves often enjoy a greater earning potential than they did in their native country, which can be advantageous for those who wish to send money back home to support their families.

One of the most significant issues to issues to affect healthcare in today’s society is the impact that illegal aliens have on the already broken healthcare system. This paper will explore the impact of undocumented Hispanics and their impact on the services available and used in California. Included will be the numbers of those that are affected as well as what is being done to decrease the impact of this population on the current healthcare system.

In response to Sabrina Geneus I am in agreement with her comments regarding one subpopulation in the U.S which has currently has access to primary care are Hispanics. She also made interesting points regarding them which are true that Hispanics do not receive health care services of high quality because of their low socioeconomic status which includes low income, assets accumulation, low wage occupations and occupational characteristic. In addition, they also endure education attainment which is an obstacle to receive health care in a timely manner. Individuals who are face with low education may ruin their ability to understand clearly the health care delivery system, such as communicate with health care providers, and understand provider’s

González, H. M., Ceballos, M., Tarraf, W., West, B. T., Bowen, M. E., & Vega, W. A. (2009). The Health of Older Mexican Americans in the Long Run. American Journal of Public Health, 99(10), 1879–1885. http://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2008.133744

Limited access to health care for Spanish Speaking populations is due to inability to afford services, difficulty with transportation, dissatisfaction with services, language barriers and inability to understand treatment plans. Health indicators of Spanish Speaking populations suggests that health outcomes continue to be behind other population groups, they also remain below goals established by Healthy People 2010 (Butler, Kim-Godwwin, & Fox, 2008). The US Spanish Speaking population represents a particular vulnerable subset of US Hispanics that have lower-income, less education, poor perceived health status and poor access to the health care System (Dubar & Gizlice, 2008).

Everyday people are sent to the hospital. Not only are they in fear of losing their life but also in fear of being in debt due to the prices of health care treatment they need. But what if this patient happens to be an illegal alien? What if the patient has a foreign illness that needs to be cured so it does not spread? Is it morally correct to deny this person treatment because he or she lacks citizenship or a valid visa? Or should illegal aliens be treated just like any other patients by having a right to health care?

All these inequalities amongst the Latino population have increased the cost of health care. By becoming competent in the needs and how we can start making changes to such disparities in the population we as providers can help lower the cost. Some of the recommendations are as follow:

Immigrants are faced with a lot of barriers when it comes to taking full advantage of basic preventive care services available to them. Of the diverse population of immigrants coming to the United States, over half (53%) of them are older Hispanics from Latin America (Strunk, Townsend-Rocchiccioli, & Sanford, 2013). This paper focuses on US-dwelling Hispanics, aged 65 years old and above. This paper will depict how failing to acculturate, lacking financial resources, and having limited ability to communicate in English pose a challenge for the older Hispanic population to obtain high quality and cost-effective patient care.

By collecting date resources from official and do the analysis, they find that “this population is also less likely than the native-born population to have access to a regular health care provider due in part to the high cost of such care and partly due to the lack of continuous coverage.” (Brown 991). There is a common situation among them that they are not covered by Medicaid or private insurance. Lack of health insurance reinforce Mexican women to deserve reasonable pre-pregnancy check. In Betancourt’s study, the table 5 also shows that seventy-six percent of Latino women have experienced the barrier of cost.

Various regions of the world have different responses to the issue of obesity. Some cultures view obesity as necessary and attractive while others are taking drastic measures in an attempt to promote a healthy lifestyle. Although some of these drastic changes seem a bit invasive and controversial, policy makers are debating whether it is effective and even whether or not such a policy should be adopted in the United States. According to the article written by Gallagher, a culture sensitive approach should be implemented in order to tackle the issue of global obesity. A study of children of Mexican descent showed that about 32.6% of Mexican children occupying the U.S. are overweight and about 19.2% are obese (Gallagher 2010). The parents observed in this study were serving their children unhealthy foods, such as those from cans and fast food restaurants, due to price and convenience (Gallagher 2010).

The United States is a melting pot of ethnicity, in which, the healthcare system and its benefits vary widely. Those who are able to obtain primary care insurance via a full time employer, typically have the benefits of full coverage care. However, for many minority groups, full time work alone is hard to acquire, along with the health benefits full time employment provides. Culturally competent care among the diverse populations helps increase health promotion and gain a cultural perspective. One of these mentioned groups is the Hispanic population which is steadily increasing within the United States.

“Obesity is a disease that affects more than one-third of the U.S adult population (approximately 78.6 million Americans). The number of Americans with obesity had steadily increase since 1960, a trend that has slowed down in recent years but show no sign of reversing”.

Access to preventive health care should not be definable as one of life’s luxuries, yet that is what is has come to be for the approximately “50 million Americans” who have no health insurance (Turka & Caplan, 2010). Clogged emergency rooms and “preventable deaths” are just two of the consequences associated with the lack of health insurance that would provide access to preventive care (Turka & Caplan, 2010). We as a nation are depriving our citizens of one of our most basic needs—being healthy.

For more than 20 years, Colombia has been trying to revamp its health care system, competing with neighboring countries and top-notch health care systems. In 1993, Colombia, as many developed countries did, introduced a health care system that was meant to cover all of its people. The law, which was known as Law 100, had the objectives to “increase access to healthcare; improve efficiency and quality of services; expand citizen participation” and redefine what a health care system was in terms of risk, behavior, and environmental factors (Bossert et al., 2000). Although the government announced in 2010 that 97% of Colombia’s population was covered by health insurance, either privately or government-funded, there are a lot of obstacles that individuals face, such as health care inequality in access to healthcare and effective use of government resources (Webster, 2012).