Off-the-cuff boastful statements by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) should usually be taken with a large grain of salt, his detractors say.
But his latest remark about the nation’s public health sector has left even his most ardent
supporters open mouthed.
“From the middle of next year, we are going to have one of the best public health
systems in the world. We have already started in Nayarit, Colima, Tlaxcala, Baja California Sur, Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Veracruz, Guerrero, and Campeche,” he told reporters during a visit to the state of Campeche Thursday.
When one local reporter asked the president about the shortage of medicines under
his new INSABI healthcare program that supplanted Seguro Popular, AMLO
claimed any deficiencies in the new model are carry-overs due to corruption by previous
administrations, saying that the Seguro Popular model was “neither safe or popular.”
AMLO also claimed that, during the coronavirus pandemic, all those infected
with the virus who needed hospitalization in Mexico were accommodated, and that no
deaths occurred outside hospitals, as happened in many other countries.
When a journalist countered that, on the Mayan peninsula t,here were many reports of
people dying from the virus in their homes, the president said he had received no such
data.
The INSABI provides free health services to all people in Mexico who do not have Social
Security (IMSS or ISSSTE) through their employers.
Critics of the new system, however, say it is failing to provide the third-tier medical coverage.