Abstract

TAMEZ GONZALEZ, Silvia  and  EIBENSCHUTZ, Catalina. Popular Health Insurance: key piece of inequity in health in Mexico. Rev. salud pública [online]. 2008, vol.10, suppl.1, pp.133-145. ISSN 0124-0064.

This work is aimed at presenting an analysis of the Mexican health system’s current situation resulting from successive reforms which have been carried out since the 1980s. Special interest is placed on the role which the Seguro Popular de Salud (SPS - a "popular", meaning universal, health insurance plan) has played, being a key piece in commercialising medical attention. The first part of this work thus presents the main antecedents for the changes made during the last two decades of the last century and analyses the current situation since the start of the new millennium. Such analysis is centred on an initial evaluation of the Seguro Popular de Salud’s scope and limitations from the perspective of equity in gaining access to medical attention. The analysis concludes that due to a medical perspective not having been present in the structural reforms, then this insurance policy represents a discretional, presidential and focalised programme taking funds away from the large social security institutions, obligating them (in many cases) to make budgetary adaptations to the detriment of providing quality attention. This situation will constitute (in the immediate future) a segmentation of the National Health System which will determine new conditions regarding the population’s differential access to medical services, increase inequity in health and contribute towards increasing the great social inequality prevailing in México.

Keywords : Equity; access; medical attention; sanitary reform; social security.

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