Moving to Mexico

It’s no secret that nursing homes are expensive and sometimes not even worth the cost, but who knew it was so bad that people decide to go to Mexico to find a good one. That’s exactly what Jean Douglas and many other aging Americans have decided to do. For $1,300 a month Douglas gets a studio apartment, three meals a day, laundry and cleaning service, and 24-hour care from an attentive staff, many of whom speak English. That’s a quarter of what an average nursing home costs in the state of Oregon where she is from. She wakes up every morning next to a glimmering mountain lake, and the average annual high temperature is 79 degrees. That doesn’t sound much like a nursing home to me. Many relatives of mine have been in nursing homes, so I know from having visited them that it’s nothing like that. In the nursing homes I’ve visited the people get a room similar to a hospital just as the food is, and for the most part the workers don’t seem all that attentive. But there are also similar problems with some of the nursing homes in Mexico. There is little government regulation, and some places have suddenly gone bankrupt, forcing American residents to move. There are also cases of Americans complaining about the food and the cleanliness of the facility. I guess it’s similar to America in that you just have to find the right home. Whatever the case maybe the fact still remains that many retirees have chosen to pack up and leave the expensive country of America for Mexico. A place with a cheaper cost of living and what sounds like a pretty good life to have.
This article is from USA today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-15-mexnursinghome_N.htm . It also discusses the health care that Americans get in the homes, the loneliness some of them feel, and the plan to build more “independent living” facilities in Mexico.