Mexico's Seguro Social Is Chaos

Speaking from experience, we can safely assure you, dear Reader, that Mexico’s Seguro Social (Universal Healthcare) is a dysfunctional system at best and chaotic at worst. We have had many sad events transpire that the system that suggests they are For the People, in fact is very much a detriment to the population.

Probably the worst situation we found ourselves in was when we received a call late in the evening, one Monday after work, that our architect Mario was on his way to Seguro Social’s hospital Emergency Room after taking a spill from his evening cycling workout session. We were assured that he would be taken care of in the emergency room intake and we should just follow up with him via phone the next day.

Photo: Hans-Peter Gauster via Unsplash

Not thinking anything of it, we connected with Mario the next day (Tuesday) to follow up on his status and what exactly happened to him the day prior. He said he was out for a ride and not even a block from his house his front tire hit a piece of rock and he was thrown from his bike breaking his elbow into a jigsaw puzzle. Horrified, we asked if there was anything we could do or at the very least if we could go visit. The answer was “No,” due to COVID restrictions that were still very much in place back in March 2021.

We told him to let us know when he would be taken into surgery as we knew this was something that needed to be taken care of immediately. He reassured us to not worry and that he would be getting his assigned surgery room and doctor soon.

Wednesday morning rolls around and Mario is still in the intake area where his gurney was side by side with other injured or ill individuals all waiting for their surgery to be set. We began to lose hope that there would be any sort of support for Mario. But, hopeful that the system wouldn’t fail him, Mario once again told us not to worry and that everything would be alright.

Thursday afternoon rolls around and we start getting angry with the situation as nothing had changed. We began to take action into our own hands. We requested that Mario be discharged from Seguro Social so that we could then take him to another clinic that could facilitate a corrective surgery for him. Thinking it would be a very easy and smooth process, it wasn’t.

Mario wasn’t discharged until Friday evening from Seguro Social and he wasn’t able to get the much needed surgery until Saturday morning. Probably one of the most painful procedures, this poor guy had to have his elbow re-broken in an effort to put his bones back in place. Instead of being taken care of on Monday evening, when he arrived to the Emergency Room at Seguro Social, he was forced to be taken out of that hospital and taken to another clinic to finally receive the care that he deserved the following Saturday afternoon.

Today, his arms are unfortunately not the same length and he will never have the same mobility functions in the broken arm (even after spending almost 2 years in therapy since his surgery). What an incredibly shocking experience it was for us thinking that Mexico’s Universal Healthcare concept would be just what the people need, but in fact the system has too many flaws and needs major overhauls in order to attempt to fix itself.