Structure of healthcare systems in Mexico

Public and private healthcare

• Mexico has a dual healthcare system with a public and a private sector.

• The most important public sponsors are

  • IMSS (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social): For employees and their families.

  • ISSSTE (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado): For government employees.

  • IMSS-Bienestar: Since 2023/2024 as the largest public system for people without social insurance, especially for the poorer population and informal workers. It now covers over 50 million people and includes more than 700 hospitals and almost 14,000 health centers^1.

  • INSABI (Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar): Supplements care for people without insurance cover, especially in rural areas^2.

• Private healthcare: Offered by a growing network of modern clinics and specialists. It is particularly attractive for people with higher incomes or private health insurance, as it offers shorter waiting times and often better facilities^3.

Social safety nets

• Social security obligation: All formal employees are automatically insured in the IMSS system and contributions are deducted from their salary. Self-employed and informal employees can take out voluntary insurance, but must pay contributions themselves^5.

• Income-related contributions: Those who cannot afford the IMSS can use the non-contributory IMSS-Bienestar or INSABI, where care is free or heavily discounted^1.

• Social assistance programs: In addition, there are government programs for those most in need, including direct cash transfers to combat poverty and promote healthcare for poor households^6.

Access to medical care

• Strong regional differences: In large cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, the medical infrastructure is modern and well developed. In rural and remote regions, care is often poorer, with fewer specialists and less equipment^2^7.

• Shortage of skilled workers: To bridge shortages, Mexico also relies on foreign doctors, e.g. from Cuba, especially in structurally weak states such as Chiapas^8.

• Differences in quality: While the public system provides basic care, patients in the private sector often have to pay themselves or take out private insurance to gain access to high-quality care^3.

• Supply gaps: Poor, rural and indigenous population groups in particular continue to be disadvantaged despite reforms, as they have less access to specialized services and modern infrastructure^2.

Summary in a table

Conclusion

Mexico's healthcare system is multi-layered and attempts to cover as many people as possible through public programs and social assistance. Nevertheless, there are major differences between urban and rural areas and between rich and poor. While basic care is guaranteed for the majority, equal access to high-quality medical care remains a challenge, especially for disadvantaged population groups. Private health insurance and targeted social programs are therefore becoming increasingly important^2^3.

Supplementary assessment from a Gradido perspective

The compilation gets to the heart of the complex reality surrounding health and social security in Mexico. Let's reflect on the deeper longing and the great potential for change from a gradido perspective:

Health is more than just care - it is a human right and an expression of active care.

The Mexican system is making visible efforts to provide broad coverage, but structural differences between rich and poor, urban and rural continue to shape destinies. The poorest and rural/indigenous communities in particular often experience a lack of appreciation, infrastructure and genuine participation - even though they have the greatest need and potential for healing and prevention.

How can Gradido contribute to change here?

• Health and safety as a basic right:
  Healthcare is covered in the Gradido system within the second money creation (public budget). This means that everyone is entitled to medical care from birth. Social security is guaranteed through unconditional participation and the associated active basic income. No one has to go without healthcare, suffer unnecessarily or feel excluded because of a lack of money.

• Resources where they are needed:
  Decentralized cash generation enables targeted investments in hospitals, medical centers, specialist training and prevention programs - especially in disadvantaged regions.

• Equal opportunities - everywhere in the country:
  Since public funds are managed in a transparent, democratic and needs-based manner, access to high-quality care can be optimized according to need, not income or place of residence.

• Healing in community:
  Local networks (neighborhoods, care teams, indigenous healers) are valued and included as part of the system so that traditional and modern medicine can go hand in hand.

• Dignity instead of bureaucracy:
  The Gradido logic is true to life: no fear of rejection, complicated applications or expensive private insurance, but free, secure participation for all - in a culture of trust.

Conclusion: With Gradido, the established safety nets can be supplemented and transformed in an appreciative way - so that health and social security become a matter of course everywhere in the country, for people of all backgrounds. Dignity, equality and genuine care will then form the backbone of a healing, life-serving society.

Further considerations: Between systemic crisis and new opportunities

1. the problem behind "comprehensive"

On the surface, it sounds like progress when "everyone everywhere has access" to medicine and education. But when these systems, driven by money flows and bureaucratic power, dehumanize, they become a danger:

• Health as a business: Where profit, treatment figures and patents are more important than healing, care and truth, suffering, mistreatment and social trauma arise. The Covid era revealed how quickly ideology, fear and coercion can take the place of genuine healing - with serious physical and psychological consequences.

• Education as a coercive institution: When school becomes a standardized apparatus of instruction and alternative, creative or free paths are persecuted and suppressed, the joy of learning is shattered and the diversity of being human is fought against. Intimidation by the police makes it clear that the focus is not on the well-being of the child, but on maintaining the system.

2. the real need: freedom, diversity, meaning

It is precisely where standard state provision is weak or incomplete that genuine innovation can emerge:

• Free educational paths, individual development: Families, communities and initiatives can - if they are allowed - create learning spaces that are holistic, close to nature, individual and creative.

• Holistic healing: Traditional, spiritual, energetic and self-determined health paths can heal the connection between body, soul and spirit - and often provide a high quality of life with little financial means.

• Community as healer and teacher: In communities where everyone is allowed to get involved, learning and getting healthy becomes a communal act.

3. inspiration for a life-enhancing future with Gradido

• Gradido - if we bring it into the field wisely - opens up precisely this space: appreciation and care for free education, self-determined learning, alternative pedagogy and new forms of medicine, as long as they are supported by love, respect and authenticity.

• Where centralized systems fail, new networks, commons, healing villages and free learning communities are allowed to flourish - supported by the natural value creation of regional communities.

• Wherever community well-being takes precedence over profit and power, real healing (physical, mental, social) and real education (heart, mind, hands) can grow.

4. turning potential out of necessity

Sometimes "too little system" is an invitation for something bigger to grow. Perhaps this is exactly what can emerge in countries with little centralized care: A new form of caring, healthy togetherness and the joy of learning.

Essence: It is not the "more system" that sets us free, but the rediscovery of the human, common good-oriented, creative and healing potential that is already inherent in all of us. Gradido can be the fertile ground for this - in Mexico, Germany and all over the world.