Loving BarryCare?

INSURANCE GIANT Aetna has announced huge losses due to participating in Weepy Barry’s apparently laughably named “Affordable Care” scheme.

I say apparently laughable because I do not live above the border and have not set foot in that troubled nation since BarryCare was made law of the land.

I have not felt BarryCare’s pain first-hand.

We here in Mexico, of course, have a superior healthcare system that basically consists of two levels: a government-supported level for poor people that anyone can use, rich or poor, and a private system, which also is open to all.

New ImageThere’s no government healthcare oppression. You get your medical care wherever you want, going wherever you can afford.

Is the bottom level ideal? Of course not. Is it better than nothing? Sho’ nuff! I have always used the private system even though I am enrolled in a free government plan.

Aetna lost $300 million last year due to participating in BarryCare in 15 states. It has canceled plans to go into other states. Forbes says there’s “overwhelming evidence that ObamaCare caused premiums to increase substantially.”

BarryCare is built, to a large extent, as a Pyramid of Cards. The broad base is young people whose premiums essentially underwrite older folks’ coverage. Since young people would not do this voluntarily, they face a tax hammer.

But many young people are finding it cheaper to suffer the tax hammer than to buy costly insurance.

Whoops! Who’d a-thunk it?

It appears that leaving the United States was a wise move on my part. I’m interested in hearing how you Gringos like BarryCare. Is it as bad as I hear?

Here is The Unseen Moon’s first-ever poll.

The vote is anonymous. Don’t be bashful:

Die-hard habits

MOVING TO another country doesn’t mean you leave your habits behind. Some of those habits are good, others less so.

One example is the American habit of medical insurance. The necessity of having coverage is ingrained into the Gringos, and I was no exception when I moved south in 2000. Almost immediately, I bought coverage from a Mexican government provider that goes by its initials IMSS.

The annual premium for major medical was the peso equivalent of about $350. There is an IMSS clinic/hospital here on the mountaintop. After a year, I had begun to lose the Gringo medical insurance habit because I’d seen how relatively inexpensive private healthcare was, plus I’d noticed the crowded conditions at the IMSS clinic.

I knew I would never use it.

stock-footage-mexico-detail-of-waving-flagDuring that year, I’d had some routine health issues, but I had not gone to the IMSS clinic, which would have been free. I went to private doctors and paid out-of-pocket. When it was time to renew the IMSS coverage, I let it lapse, and I’ve been uninsured since.*

But today’s topic is not the superlative Mexican medical system. It’s die-hard habits. My health-coverage obsession 15 years ago is an example. Another is the U.S. passport. Mine will expire soon.

Coincidentally, both my Mexican passport and U.S. passport expire next year, the former in February, the latter in May. Both were issued for 10 years. There will be no waffling on renewing the Mexican passport. That’s a no-brainer, and it’s not that difficult to do.

A decade ago I got my first Mexican passport in an office in the old Colonial center of the state capital. The system was good, but the offices were cramped and jam-packed with people, most no doubt dreaming of visiting America. That was not my dream. It was my past.

Those offices have moved out of downtown and into a large space in a strip mall, eliminating the previous, cramped conditions. My wife renewed her passport in those new offices a few years ago, and I was impressed with its well-oiled efficiency. You make an appointment online, and you leave after a few hours with fresh passport in hand.

The last time I renewed my U.S. passport, I went to the bunkered Embassy in Mexico City. Once I penetrated the building the process went smoothly. The passport was express-mailed to me weeks later.

us flagThis time, however, I would do it at the U.S. Consulate in San Miguel de Allende about 140 miles away. I don’t know if that option was available 10 years ago. I’ve only been to that office once, to get something notarized, and I had to wait in a long, slow line.

From what I’ve been told, processing takes five weeks (Compare to Mexico’s passport process of one day.) and I’d have to return to San Miguel, or they would express-mail it to me at a higher cost.

But I face a dilemma: Why do I need a U.S. passport? I have not been in the United States since early 2009. I doubt I will ever set foot there again. I have a Mexican passport that will get me anywhere a U.S. passport will — with the sole exception of the United States.

And here we encounter a die-hard habit. I likely will renew it even though I know it’s a total waste of time and money. But I promise one thing. It will be the last renewal, one way or the other.

* * * *

* Not quite true. About three years ago, at my wife’s insistence, we enrolled in another government healthcare system named Seguro Popular (Popular Insurance). It is totally free, zero co-pay, but I cannot imagine ever using it either for the same reasons I balked at IMSS.

We’d have to be dead broke.