Mexico Expanding Its Health Plan

All 31 of Mexico’s states will join the country’s first nationwide health coverage program for the poor, Health Secretary Julio Frenk said Tuesday.

Twenty-nine states already have joined the joint federal-state Popular Insurance program, and the remaining two -- Durango and Chihuahua -- will sign on next week. Mexico City, a federal district, will continue to run its own healthcare plan.

Popular Insurance is an ambitious program started this year to cover the estimated 50 million Mexicans who have no health insurance because they don’t have formal, salaried jobs, Frenk said.

All poor Mexicans are expected to be covered by the plan by 2010.

“Poor people told us, ‘We want medicines to be available, and we want to be treated decently,’ ” Frenk said.

The plan will include coverage of most medications, routine hospitalization and a short list of some more serious diseases, including AIDS.

Under the plan, the federal government will pay about 72% of the estimated $750 cost of annual coverage for the average family, states will pick up 14%, and those families able to pay will kick in the remaining 14%.

The program will double spending on healthcare for the poor by 2010, but raise overall health outlays by only about 17%, or about $6.5 billion, annually, Frenk said.

At present, Mexicans employed in the private sector are covered by payroll-deduction health plans under the Mexican Social Security Institute, and government workers have a similar but separate plan. However, almost half of Mexicans are self-employed or work off the books and thus aren’t covered.