What are the health care options for Guanajuato?

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There are lots of them.

If you have private insurance, which costs around $2,500 per year, You will end up at the Centro Médico la Presa, at Paseo de la Presa 85. You will also end up there is you want a treatment not covered by insurance, such as cosmetic surgery.

There are two government-run health care schemes, IMSS (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social) and Seguro Popular. (There is a third one, ISSTE, which is only for government employees.)

IMSS’s primary function is to serve employees, and they provide a pension scheme as well as health care. However, extranjeros are allowed to buy into the health care part of it. The annual premium depends on your age; it’s around 10,000 pesos per year for people over 60.

The stumbling block for IMSS is, they have a list of preconditions, and if you have any of them, they won’t cover you. Not only that; if, at some time in the future, they find out that you lied about a precondition, they won’t just kick you out of the system; they will give you a bill for all treatments that you have received from them.

The IMSS hospital and emergency room (known as IMSS #10) is located on Parque del Cantador. Various lab tests are also done at the hospital. The IMSS clinic (known as IMSS #50) is not very conveniently located at Mineral de Cata. Their financial office, where you apply for coverage and pay for renewals, is in the old mint building east of the Teatro Juarez.

You will have to go to León for some procedures, CT scans, for example.

The IMSS benefits include free generic drugs. However, most generic drugs are dirt cheap anyway.

Seguro Popular underwent an reorganization in 2019, which consisted of moving control of the organization from individual states to the Federal government. During this process, some Seguro Popular offices refused to accept applications for coverage and renewals from non-citizens. (Seguro Popular coverage has to be renewed every three years.) However, the Seguro Popular office here (which is at the Hospital General de Guanajuato, near the bus station) was not one of the problem spots.

The annual premium depends on your income and assets, but it should be around 1,000 pesos a year.

Many pharmacies in Guanajuato (and elsewhere in Mexico) have a medico on the premises. Their services are ususally good quality and very inexpensive. Keep in mind, however, that this service is a “loss leader” for the pharmacy, and you might see a tendency for these medicos to over-prescribe.

It’s easy to obtain flu shots for free. For example, the IMSS clinic #50 gives free flu shots even to people who don’t have IMSS coverage.