{"id":41069,"date":"2020-12-18T09:11:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T15:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=41069"},"modified":"2020-12-18T09:11:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T15:11:05","slug":"covered-kind-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/covered-kind-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Covered (Kind of)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Post 80 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

I’m getting very close to the date when I’ll be able to become a permanent resident of Mexico. I’m also in serious saving-for-a-house mode and growing my business like mad… and over 40. Something that never used to bother me too much started to eat at me — lack of catastrophic healthcare coverage. It would be stupid to lose all that I’m working for for because of a medical problem.<\/p>\n

I handle the little things just fine paying out of pocket. Because of how the healthcare system didn’t work in Quebec, I just never got in the habit of going to see a doctor for much. The thought of going for a sniffle is beyond me. Heck, I even learned how to do my own first aid care. I would have ideally needed more regular follow-up with my anemia problem, but the process for getting a simple blood test and then having those results followed up on was so onerous and flawed that I never even bothered with that.<\/p>\n

So all that to say, I knew that getting myself a private healthcare policy in Mexico here for annual checkups and such would be a huge waste of money. I’m just fine paying the $200-ish pesos every six months to have my iron levels checked by popping out to the clinic right around the corner from me first thing on a Monday morning and then going back out around 4:00 P.M. to pick up the results. Ear wax build up? Most pharmacies have a medical clinic attached ,and it’s just about 50 pesos or so for the treatment. UTI? Message a doctor friend and he messages back a prescription. Easy peasy.<\/p>\n

But what if my appendix goes rogue or I find out I have cancer or I trip on Bonita going down the stairs and break my femur? Big things that would affect not just my bank account at the moment but long-term. What if I found myself unable to work on top of accumulating hundreds of thousands of pesos’ worth of medical bills?<\/p>\n

A friend of mine is an insurance broker, so I spoke to her about my concerns and the possibility of getting catastrophic healthcare coverage. The request, it turned out, was not unusual and such a product exists! She pointed out that the going cost for an appendectomy right now is around 150,000 pesos (7,500USD\/10,000CAD). That would be devastating to my current savings plan.<\/p>\n

The policy she recommended is from AXA, a company that has provided me vehicle insurance in Canada and decent service, so seeing a familiar name was helpful. I got the most basic policy for just under 13,000 pesos for a year, covering me, in theory, for up to 2 million pesos in bills. There are a ton of conditions that I’m not insured for for the first couple of years, so I’m glad I started young and can build up a history. The deductible is 40,000 pesos and I also have to pay 10% of the bill after the deductible, up to another 40,000 pesos. So I have to be prepared to shell out up to 80,000 pesos should anything really major happen. But the deductible is waived in the case of an accident.<\/p>\n

On top of this policy, I am able to access the government healthcare here now, the new programme that replaced the former Seguro Popular. I just have to present my residente temporal card and a copy of my CURP (Mexican SIN\/SSN). So if I find myself in a situation where my policy hasn’t kicked in yet or I’m not covered, I do have a safety net. I can’t imagine that the government healthcare here is any worse than what I experienced in Quebec, so my plan was to go through there if I had something catastrophic happen. But you know what? I’m not poor anymore, I’m constantly upgrading my standard of living, and so I’d much rather be in a lovely new hospital with a dedicated team of professionals than hanging out on a gurney in an overcrowded hallway…<\/p>\n

The $13,000 for the policy was a huge chunk out of my savings account, but the peace of mind is priceless. I’m so grateful that I’m starting to have a network here. I think that if I had had to look for a broker first, I would have kept on procrastinating. But being able to go to a friend who knows me really helped cut down on the work I had to do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Post 80 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!) I’m getting very close to the date when I’ll be able to become a permanent resident of Mexico. I’m also in serious saving-for-a-house mode and growing my business like mad… and over 40. Something that never used to bother me too much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[895],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41070,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41069\/revisions\/41070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}