Travel: Retiring Across the Border, Mexico and Beyond
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Many of the American settlers barely speak a word of Spanish. They move south not so much in pursuit of the sun, which they could find just as easily in Florida or Arizona, but in a search for a cheaper way of life, along with the sense of community that foreign enclaves generate. Estimates for the number of Americans of non-Mexican ethnicity who have retired to Mexico, mostly in San Miguel and a handful of other towns, hover around 250,000, with at least as many Americans with Mexican roots more widely dispersed. But the house-price boom they and other foreigners, notably Canadians, have created is now driving others even farther south.
Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras all offer tax breaks to foreigners seeking to retire there. Beachfront developments catering for pensioners have sprung up along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, with a house right on the beach often costing just half what you could expect to pay in San Miguel, smack in the middle of Mexico. Even an influx of a few tens of thousands of American “senior citizens” can have a big impact on the small economies of the Central American countries. And the numbers could grow even bigger if America agreed to change its public health-care system for those over 65.
At present, Medicare, as the system is called, cannot be claimed abroad. So American pensioners tend to travel back to the United States to get treatment. The possibility of making Medicare "portable" has been talked about for years. But, apart from the introduction of a small pilot project, it has never got much further than just an idea. Yet the advantages are clear: expatriate pensioners would find it easier to get health care; the costs for the crisis-ridden Medicare would be lessened; and Mexico and other Central American countries with American pensioners would benefit not only from a rise in their health-care expenditure, but also from the big increase in their numbers that such a change would certainly bring.
Incidentally, foreigners can enroll in the Mexican national health insurance program for only $300 per year, and private insurance is cheaper than in the United States.
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