At Mexico News Daily, we highlight key growth industries and report on the major investments taking place in Mexico.
Just earlier this week, we reported on how Mexico has received announcements of foreign direct investment (FDI) from January to April 15 of this year totaling more than all FDI recorded in 2023, which was a record year.
We get a lot of questions from readers asking us about the big opportunities for investment in Mexico moving forward, and we try to highlight some of those as well.
Water scarcity is a huge issue across the nation and we have been covering the risks as well as opportunities, and what some companies are doing to help address the problems. We have also covered the automotive, digital services, medical device production, semiconductors and aeronautics industries, which are attracting significant investment.
Other big opportunities that we have written about are in infrastructure, commercial, residential and industrial real estate, as well as in agricultural production. Just recently the CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, Pedro Casas, highlighted 4 key growth industries in an article he wrote for Mexico News Daily.
A significant opportunity that I think is still in its infancy is the senior health care services industry.
Many people have asked me for my thoughts on this topic, specifically regarding the areas of senior living and care, as well as medical tourism. I don’t have expertise in these industries, and so far, our coverage has been limited to a recent article we did on Mexico’s first hospice care clinic, which is opening soon in San Miguel de Allende.
However, it is an intriguing topic for many reasons. Today there are at least 1.6 million U.S. citizens and over 12,000 Canadians already living in Mexico — many of them are retirees. Many more are coming every day. Many have been in Mexico for years and have no plans to go back to live elsewhere. As we all know, providing safe and affordable health care services is already a major concern in many parts of the U.S. and Canada.
Rapidly rising costs — from the products and services themselves, to the real estate, to labor — have all contributed to the skyrocketing total costs of care. To make matters worse, since the pandemic, many hospitals have been struggling with labor shortages that make it difficult in many areas to provide the care needed.
Surprisingly, there are very limited options for senior living and senior care in Mexico focused on the foreign market. I have heard of assisted living facilities focused on serving seniors in places like San Miguel de Allende, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta and Chapala/Ajiiic. However, these types of specialized services being done in Mexico have their own challenges — language barriers, staff training, on-site specialized medical care, and healthcare insurance — just to name a few.
Mexico seems like a very logical answer to many of these problems considering that the country has a relatively young and well-trained workforce. In addition, the costs of everything from labor to real estate are often significantly lower. The ability to have 24-hour care in most parts of Mexico is far more economically viable. Mexicans culturally are accustomed to very close extended and multi-generational families. As a result, it is a culture that is known for a high degree of respect, warmth, care and empathy towards elders.
Most people I speak with who have had experiences with Mexican doctors, nurses, and health care providers overwhelmingly have nothing but positive things to say about the quality of care that they have received.
Health care is arguably one of the most complicated industries on the planet, so I am not saying that this opportunity would be easy. As with any business idea, it comes with significant risks and challenges. Building and managing adequate facilities with the properly trained staff in Mexico would not be inexpensive or risk-free. But the opportunity is too big to not gain more attention from the business and investment community.
Based on what I hear from talking to expats around the country, this is a large and growing market that is here to stay; there is a significant market need; and supply is extremely limited.
Let’s hope that some bright entrepreneurs and business folks go after it, as demand for these services increases.
Travis Bembenek is the CEO of Mexico News Daily and has been living, working or playing in Mexico for over 27 years.
Mexican insurance industry is a major barrier for this to happen. Maybe an opportunity for US insurance carriers?
US insurance carriers won’t come in offering more than Mexican insurers offer unless Mexican laws and regulations surrounding the health insurance industry are updated or more harmonized with US law and regulation. Remember who vehemently opposed the Affordable Care Act – which forced insurers to offer insurance e regardless od pre-existing conditions. It passed, and has saved lives and allowed many to obtain coverage when it was closed to them before the ACA.
I don’t think that my United HealthCare sept medicare insurance would cover it but it would be smart to do so. I have great respect for Mexican healthcare and from what I see its pricing is like real estate, i.e., much cheaper than here in Alta California.
I understand your concern Robert Burns. My wife and I purchased Long Term Care insurance policies with international care included when we were much younger at a very low premium. Of course, I recognize that the cumulative premiums paid is quite exorbitant; but, now we both have more coverage then we need at the cost of Mexican care. If one of goes in first the other can follow with coverage. We can stay together here in Mexico.
What insurance company (in the USA) provides an international rider for care in Mexico? Nationwide?
Yvonne, we have a Genworth policy from 2013.
The Barra-Melaque area has finally found someone to administer its home healthcare project.
Do have a contact or web site you can share? We have an elderly expat in Manzanillo that at some point could benefit from this. Thanks!
This is a very interesting topic. However, I am more concerned about the condition of the Mexican health care system for the Mexican people. The Mexican people who can afford it, use private hospitals but the general public must use the public healthcare system and public hospitals. From what I hear, they are dreadful. Fortunately, as a visitor, I have never had to use either. Have you written articles about this?
I write about Mexico for living at www.mexicoforliving.com I live in the Lake Chapala area, birthplace of overseas living for US folks back to the 1940’s. The senior care model in Mexico (for foreigners) is a hodge podge of solutions that often provide quality care at a fraction of the cost up north. But here are trade-offs.
I brought my mom at age 93 when my step father died to my small town near Cuernavaca, Morelos which has an Assisted Living facility and there are several of these in Cuernavaca as well. The cost was about $40,000 pesos per month ($2,000. US at that time). The care was exceptionally good with loving people around the clock. Your article mentions “it is a culture that is known for a high degree of respect, warmth, care and empathy towards elders” and I can say this was very true! My mom had been in a care facility in Houston after she broke her hip that was only covered by Medicare for 6 months and after that cost almost $10,000.US per month! Plus she was isolated into the memory ward because of her dementia. In Mexico she was with a mix of various kinds of assisted living that included art, yoga, wonderful food, & great care! I could be there almost every day for her for the 3 years she lived there.
Beautiful.
I feel that in Home Care is very reasonable in Mexico and will be my option when and if the time comes. However a place like leisure world but in Mexico does have potential and I can see where there would be a business opportunity and at the same time fill a void.
You may want to look at efforts being led by Democrats Abroad to pass legislation for Medicare Portability so that Medicare would pay for medical services provided outside the United States.
See my comment… That was me, in the 2000s. I worked on this for a number of years. I was a founding member of Dems Abroad Costa Banderas back in 2007. It’s very complicated for a ton of reasons but I remain hopeful that at some point, Congress will pass the necessary legislation. I’t’s not going to happen soon, though.
I believe Doug Hall’s idea above:
‘You may want to look at efforts being led by Democrats Abroad to pass legislation for Medicare Portability so that Medicare would pay for medical services provided outside the United States.’
Is logical & hopefully, has great potental.
Hopefully my investors will come through for my business plan for affordable assisted living/senior care in my city, we have water (the ocean/desal plants) and bilingual workers, and only 60 miles driving to the Arizona border. A much needed facility/service where we can easily “fill the beds”.
Thank you for the article. I’ve been wanting to see more about this opportunity for the 17 years I’ve been here in Puerto Penasco, Sonora. I appreciate any feedback from out there too.
I had heard there was a group of our ex-pats here in Puerto Penasco trying to get an assisted living facility established. I am glad you and several others are working towards this goal. I know several of my friends have talked about this for years and wished they could bring their elderly parents here for the care they need at more affordable prices. I really hope you are successful.
Thank you Ross. I’ve been by myself for 17 years trying to put something together. I’m not familiar with the “others” but I do hear comments about how good it would be here. I should have mentioned in my original post that my idea is for cash payers, not relying on any government agency. I had to deal with this with my mom 30 years ago with cash, in a Tucson facility. There are plenty of opportunities with cash pays, families in the U.S. are not used to taking care of elderly in their homes, the opposite is in Mexico, that’s one of the reasons there’s no senior facilities for Mexicans, well there is one here in Rpcky Point but very small (Casa Hogar I think) Thank you for your feedback.
Until the US government realizes that providing eligible beneficiaries’ medical care through cross-border Medicare reimbursement, it’s going to be difficult to develop senior care services such as in-home or facility-based nursing care. Even though healthcare cost is much lower in Mexico, a major medical event is well beyond the reach of most US retirees living here. And even though many – a plurality – of seniors who come to retire in Mexico say they have no plans to return NOTB, the evidence suggests that eventually, many are forced to do so as their age-related medical needs increase.
In the 2000s, during the Obama years, I worked extensively on efforts to bring a pilot project for Medicare to Mexico. I am an economist, worked in the US Senate in the 1990s before relocating to Mexico. I worked closely with Dr David Warner, a public policy professor at the University of Texas-Austin on this. We surveyed retirees in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, and Cabo San Lucas. We did cost comparison analyses of a range of commonly needed senior medical procedures (and found that most were between 32% to 40% of the cost for the same procedure in the US). I would have to consult our research on this (it’s been a while), but even on a small scale pilot project conducted in the cities where we did our surveys, we estimated that Medicare could save about $17 billion US per year. I traveled to Washington DC many times, to discuss and build support for the issue with House and Senate staffers and elected officials. We finally gave up, getting no real traction to introduce legislation (required under the 1965 Medicare and Medicaid Act) to establish the pilot project. To be honest, quite a few Democrats were open to the idea – and particularly members on the various subcommittees that handle healthcare legislation. We did not find much support among Republicans. A frequent response was “They decided to leave the US, why should the government subsidize their personal choices?” (notwithstanding that workers pay into the system during their entire working lives). Perhaps in the next congress, someone should take another swing at this. The benefits to the Medicare system (savings), to the eligible retirees living in Mexico (the Medicare coverage they paid for), and to the development of a thriving senior care and senior healthcare industry are unmistakeable.
Yours is quality material that should be seen in major publications. Beyond the regulatory and anti-fraud costs to address care in another country, the savings would necessarily be dramatic. Ex pats can come back to the U.S.A. and soak “pure medicare” just as my Brit friends in the U.S.A. do in the U.K. Thank you.
I emphasize and know this to be a great truth. “it is a culture that is known for a high degree of respect, warmth, care and empathy towards elders”
I have read that the number of Americans living in Mexico is 2 million, most of whom would be , could be covered by Medicare. I’ve also talked to my HMO , my secondary provider about providing full services by class one hospitals and clinics in MX. If we can handle free trade, we certainly can handle less expensive health care in MX.
We do not just pay for Medicare all of our working lives. We continue to pay for it at variable rates from about $166 to $350 per month; it just is taken directly our=t of our Social Security checks.
A true warrior for the cause of expanding senior care in Mexico is Javier Govi and his company AMAR. They are very active in seeking partnerships with developers to create the needed facilities to serve both foreigners and aging Mexicans. No one denies the demand is there. However, my experiences promoting Mexico for living face the stark reality that the perceptions related to security and “lawlessness” keep the idea of moving here a very under-considered option. That’s a shame for Americans facing scary futures and for the Mexican economy as an opportunity. No unified private/public effort to get a senior care model for the future off the launchpad has been developed. Staff training (bilingual nurses) is a huge shortfall, although our local (Lake Chapala) branch of the University of GDL has opened a senior nursing program in anticipation of growing demand.
I think that the biggest problem for retired expats living in Mexico or elsewhere, is the fact that My Medicare does not cover Americans living outside the US. This is largely because a very high cost US medical system and associated lobbies (hospitals, doctors, pharma companies, etc.) want to capture and force Americans to be treated in the US.
If the to aw could be changed for global coverage, the low cost, & very efficient healthcare systems in Mexico (& Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Thailand, etc. etc.) would save the US system billions of dollars, and the health risks and uncertainty for expats.
BINGO! See my comment here in these responses.
BINGO! See my comment in this thread. I worked on this for several years, with little to show for it. The many House and Senate staffers and elected officials I met with in Washington didn’t often admit it but they knew (and I knew as a former Senate staffer who worked on healthcare policy) the score. US Pharma, the AMA, the AHA, and so many more… totally opposed. And they fund campaigns at a level none of us can.
Now that Mexican immigrants have roots throughout the U.S.A. I predict a change of awareness.
The need for an assisted living facility for expats living in Oaxaca has been discussed and agreed upon for a number of years, but thus far no real plans have been put in place (so far as I know) to bring such a project to fruition. I have known several people – couples or singles – who reluctantly had to return to the U.S. to enter an assisted living community there. They would have much preferred to move to such a center here in Oaxaca because of established friendships, the quality and caring nature of medical treatment and the drastically lower costs here.
There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about what healthcare costs are paid for by Medicare / Medicaid (which is very different) or by Medicare replacement plans.
Long term custodial care is generally not covered or at least not covered 100%. Anywhere.
In the United States, senior custodial care is expensive, will consume your total assets and then pay under Medicaid for housing and services if the individual has a medical need.
It’s quite complicated. Everyone would do well to understand the rules and benefits.
Basic custodial and medical Care in Mexico could be a better alternative but again, it won’t likely be under Medicare. Medicare replacement policies still follow for profit strategies so perhaps in the future and under limited circumstances currently.
Plan for the future but it’s hard to know what rules will apply in the future in the US or Mexico.
You are correct. Those who experience it through selves, family, or employment working within the system know this. Medicaid, at least Medi-Cal here in Alta California, pays for assisted living. Medicare never pays for it unless it’s actually skilled nursing or the like. Medicare doesn’t pay for skilled nursing after about 100 days generally, or so memory says, as if there were a statute of limitations on medical afflictions. So, what do those whiners do in the U.S.A. that they can’t do in México.
Medical insurance aside, my hope is that Mexicans move into this healthcare field rather than lose it to gringos.