Pharmacists in Mexico and their health Care?

Question

Thanks for your answer but I need to know something else.

I'm planning on becoming a pharmacist and if i becaome one

and moved to Mexico, how will my lilfe be? will i struggle or live a good life? decent or well off like pharmacists in the US?

thanks

Answer 1

Look, in Mexico the people that run the actual pharmacies are usually people with just a highschool degree at best that passed a little course on how to recognize drugs and which presentations of them are sold there. Other times the person running the place has no idea what the h**l he's doing and it's basically you poiting your finger at the medicine you need.

People that have a degree in Pharmacy aren't wasting their time with a petty job like that. They work for major pharmaceutical companies earning big money (In Mexican salarial terms) researching new drugs, helping doctors in clinical trials and publicity.

As a foreigner, that's the route you'd want anyways since the company will get you a working visa and you won't need perfect spanish and how to mess with Mexico's wonderful bureaucracy when it comes to opening a new family-run business.

Health care here is very different than the US. 50% of the population has public health insurance which is either IMSS (workers), ISSTE (government employees) or the uber fancy and over wealthy PEMEX and railroad health service. If you have Pemex insurance, you must be d**n lucky, it's impossible to get and the care is top notch. About 5-8% have private insurance (kinda costly, but still probably far cheaper than in the US). The rest of the population doesn't have health insurance per se.

Now, I know what the IMSS is like, I'm a med student afterall. If you're expecting luxury with Picasso paintings everywhere, forget it. Now, do the operating rooms have chickens flying everywhere and you bring the water from a well? No, we're not that primitive haha.

Of all the IMSS hospitals I've been to, I think they are mostly nice. You don't get private rooms or televisions, but the installations otherwise are good. There's a lot of political problems about some defuct pension rules where peopel in their early 40's can legally "retire" even if they have no disease or disability, get a 200 buck a month pension with free health service for the rest of their lives and continue working elsewhere (or just live like social parasites doing nothing a la welfare). The rules have changed so that new employees can't do that, but people will invent any excuses to cause annoying trouble.

At the IMSS medicines are free (yes, even drugs against HIV or to prevent organ transplant rejection which literally cost an arm and a leg), but given silly buraeucratical rules regarding buying in bulk, you usually find there's a surplus of 1 drug and nothing of another drug. Patients are forced then to buy them with their own cash.

Public non IMSS hospitals give decent service (notice that I don't mean this against doctors, more like because there isn't enough medicines or cash to maintain more complex facilities so even if you're a great doctor you can't give the best treatment sometimes) though the installations aren't even nearly as nice as the IMSS.

Private hospitals vary a lot between good installations and ridiculously pompous made for the super rich. The Angeles and ABC chain hospitals cover the second group. Installations are always impecable and the rooms (which are always private) even have cable tv and dvd players, they almost have a freaking minibar, it's like a bloody suite hotel or something.

Ah, are they cheap? Haha, no way, but if you have private health insurance costs are almost cut to zero so even middle class people can enjoy excessive service that is still only a fraction of what the same thing would cost in a hospital in the US.

Now, do doctors prefer to work at private hospitals or public? In my experience most of them work at both places. They work in a public one in the morning and a private one in the afternoon. Each has their cons and their pros.

Public hospitals. Pros: Higher paycheck (if you work at the IMSS you've pretty much got a winner well paid job), as a surgeon you get experience doing both kinds of surgery (laparoscopy and regular), being a hospital aimed at the poor, you get more interesting cases given poor people tend to wait until they are really sick to get treatment. Must add also that the higher load of patients means you gain more experience overall (not to mention you have chances of seeing people with rare diseases of almost whatever you can think of).

The cons are that in these places, if you're not guarding your belongings almost with your life, there's a chance some janitor or some dude comes by and steals it. I always hear stories of sthetoscopes people steal from a room and the doctor sees the same guy selling it in the street 1 hour later (although I've never actually seen this myself, but apparently it's true). More patients means that you have less time to have slow-paced appointments with them, sometimes I've seen doctors looking at a patient for only 5 minutes. There's always a LOT of people, believe me. Risk of getting infected with something can be higher given the amount of sicker people coming in.

Private: Luxury installations means freebee cookies (yaay!! ^o^), cable tv and a bunch of other luxuries at the doctor lounge room. The chances of getting your stuff stolen are far lower and if you're a lazy person, you get less work and surgeries are less complicated because richer people try to get treated early.

The cons are that the lesser patients mean less working experience, though you do get to rest a lot more. It really depends on the kind of person you are and how much workload you can tolerate. Oh, salaries are FAR lower than at public hospitals believe it or not. I know several surgeons that hate operating at the Angeles because sometimes they get only paid 100 dollars (given the cost of renting a room is at that place, I can agree with the disgust of some doctors regarding working at those places).

I've seen good and bad at both places though if I had to choose, I like public a bit more. It's just more fun to be there with all of the boistering people and all the action. I feel like I'm at the bloody Hyatt regency when I go to some of these private hospitals. ^^'

Oh, one last thing regarding IMSS insurance. It's not that it's uber expensive to get it, it's that not all forms of employment grant it. If you are an outsider employee working part-time as a consultant with a temporary contract, you don't get IMSS. Only "base" employees get it. Some companies twist the limits of mexican law so that they don't have to give IMSS to their employees (because companies are supposed to give part of their earnings to IMSS to keep it running, it's a tribase system).

It also can be harder for foreigners to get IMSS as well though private insurance doesn't care about your citizenship as long as you have the cash to pay for it.

Therefore, a house maid that works at millionaire houses part-time has no health insurance. The law doesn't enforce houses to pay for it even if the maid works there full-time. A lot of farmers don't have it either. In the case of farmers, by law they are entitled to have it, but a lot of them are uneducated and don't know how to sign up. That helps explain why 40 million mexicans don't have health insurance.

Answer 2

Wealthy people and those who work for the gov't have private or high quality gov't health care plans.  Poor people have no insurance. There is a national health care plan that covers everything after the 1st year and care is given in local clinics.  The fee is paid yearly and costs between $150 and $ 300 a year depending on your age. MANY people cannot afford this. There are charity hospitals and clinics for the extremely poor.  Doctors charge between $15 AND $ 30.00for an office call and many people just pay cash.  Many pharmacies also have a "consultario" where you can speak to a doctor and get  a recommendation for what medicine to buy.  This costs $1.50 or $2.00..and is the only health care many people get.  Most medicines are much cheaper than in the U.S.  Hospital costs...even in the nicer private hospitals...are a fraction of costs in the U.S.  The charity hospital in my area is very plain...but very clean and well-staffed. Patients get good care and a social worker helps the family find a way to pay what they can.  There is no high pressure to pay when people simply cannot.   Mediun income people and foreigners can get good quality medical care for much less than in the U.S.   Medical care in France is not free...SOMEONE has to pay for it...so TAXES are high to cover that "free" medical care.   The IMSS national health care plan is good...it is just that the very poor cannot afford it.