Obamacare may be Mexico's gain

After Obamacare, where will Americans go for quality care?
To Mexico, that's where.

The ink was still drying on the President's signature on the government takeover of American healthcare, when a notice went out from the Institute of the Americas at the University of California San Diego advertising a conference for April 21 entitled "The Future of Health Care for Americans in Mexico."

Mexico has always been the place where Americans can get whatever's banned in America. Alcohol during Prohibition (and underage drinking since), gambling before Indian casinos, Cuban cigars, power plants generating electricity for California that don't meet California environmental standards, maids and gardeners, illegal drugs. You get the idea. All along the border, Americans have always relied on Mexico to provide what we really want but publicly oppose.

Legal drugs too. In the debate a few years ago about prescription drugs, the availability of cheaper drugs in Canada was widely reported in the U.S., in part because the narrative fit the media template of extolling government-run healthcare as better and cheaper. Never mind the thousands of Canadians who come to the U.S. for treatment in a timely fashion—those stories didn't fit the template and were widely ignored.

But for decades, Americans near the Mexican border have traveled South to buy (much) cheaper prescription drugs. Given that it's Mexico, in the same way that Americans should be wary of the authenticity of the street vendor "Cuban" cigar, customers should check the prescription packaging carefully to detect tampering or dilution. But the same drugs and over-the-counter remedies available in the U.S. are available just a few miles away in Mexico for much less.

So too with medical care. Mexican dentists along the border do a land rush business from American customers. Many an eye glass wearer in El Paso bought those glasses in Juarez. Many an American women "on vacation" in Mexico is recovering from cosmetic surgery in a plush Mexican spa.