MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has announced a $5.7-billion, two-year plan to revamp the country's health care system for the poor.
The plan aims to improve hospitalization services and ensure supplies of medications for poor Mexicans not covered by one of the two main federal health insurance programs.
Mexico has one system for private-sector workers whose employers pay for their health care, and another system for government employees.
Farmers, the self-employed and street vendors fall outside those plans, and are treated at a patchwork of state and local clinics.
But they but would be eligible for treatment at hospital in the two other systems under the new plan.
Lopez Obrador announced Friday the federal government would take responsibility for treating everyone in eight states in the impoverished southeast.
