Off-the-cuff boastful statements by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador should often be taken with a large pinch of salt, his detractors consistently point out.
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 quizzed the president about the shortage of medicines under his new INSABI healthcare program that supplanted Seguro Popular, the president 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.”
López Obrador 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 there 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 coverage for serious illnesses that were covered by Seguro Popular.