Mexico's big hope: get 5 million U.S. retirees

MEXICO CITY — Mexico is silently working on proposals aimed at drawing millions of U.S. retirees to this country, which could eventually lead to the most ambitious U.S.-Mexican project since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Felipe Calderón is likely to propose the first steps toward expanding U.S. retirement benefits and medical tourism to Mexico when he goes to Washington on an official visit May 19, according to well-placed officials here. If not then, he will raise the issue later this year, they say.

“It’s one of the pillars of our plans to trigger economic and social well-being in both countries,” Mexico’s ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan told me. “We will be seeking to increasingly discuss this issue in coming months and years.”

Calderón brought it up during a U.S.-Canada-Mexico summit in Guadalajara in August last year, but President Barack Obama asked him to shelve the idea until he was able to pass healthcare reform, another official told me.

Now that Congress has passed healthcare reform, Calderón is preparing to charge ahead.

A GROWING MARKET
There are already an estimated 1 million Americans living in Mexico. And according to Mexican government estimates based on U.S. Census figures, that number is likely to soar to 5 million by 2025 as the U.S. population grows older and more Americans look for sunny, cheaper places to retire.

The U.S. Census projects that the number of U.S. retirees will soar from 40 million now to nearly 90 million by 2050. Already, 5 million American retirees live abroad, of whom 2.2 million are in the Western Hemisphere — mostly in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Brazil. Another 1.5 million live in Europe and 850,000 in Asia.

The key to luring more U.S. medical tourists and retirees to Mexico and other Latin American countries will be getting hospitals in the region to be certified by the U.S. Joint International Commission, which establishes that they meet U.S. hospitals’ standards. There are already eight Mexican hospitals certified by the JIC and several others awaiting certification.

According to Mexican government estimates, healthcare costs in Mexico are about 70 percent lower than in the United States. And from my own experience, those estimates are right: As I reported at the time, when I was hospitalized in Mexico two years ago for an emergency operation, my hospital bill was indeed about 70 percent lower than what it would have been in Miami.

So what will Calderón specifically propose to Obama? Most likely, the Mexican president will suggest starting with a low-profile agreement that would allow the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration to pay for Medicare benefits to U.S. retirees in Mexico. Under current rules, Medicare only covers healthcare services in the United States.

IT JUST MAKES SENSE
My opinion: Mexico and much of Latin America are bound to become growing U.S. retirement and medical tourism destinations, much like Spain has become a permanent living place for Germans, Britons and Northern Europeans.

You won’t read much about it now because neither Calderón nor Obama will emphasize it publicly while the drug-related violence in northern Mexico is making big headlines, and while the political wounds from the recent U.S. healthcare debate are still open in Washington, D.C.

But I’m increasingly convinced that, as the violence in Mexico subsides and the healthcare debate becomes a distant memory in Washington, medical benefits’ deals will become a top U.S.-Latin American priority. Just as free-trade agreements were the big thing of the 1990s, healthcare agreements will be the big deal of the coming decade.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Calderón and Obama take the first baby steps toward a U.S.-Mexico healthcare agreement by finding a way to pay for Medicare benefits for U.S. expatriates in Mexico, or getting U.S. states to allow similar payments. Then, most likely after the 2012 presidential election in both countries, the two would start negotiating a more ambitious deal.

Demography, geography and economics are pointing in that direction. With the U.S. population getting older, a record U.S. budget deficit, rising U.S. healthcare costs, and Mexico and other Latin American countries badly needing more tourism and investments, this should be a win-win for everybody.

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Brad Billingsley and his wife Linda

Brad Billingsley could have been waiting for his tee time at an Arizona golf course.

Instead, the former Lafayette resident and his wife Linda were in a lagoon off Cabo San Lucas, snapping photos of gray whales bobbing next to their small charter boat.

“Every day, it’s an adventure here,” Brad Billingsley said. “It’s added 20 years to my life.”

Brad, 62, and Linda Billingsley, 61, are among the “silver surge” of baby boomers seeking alternative retirement nests in Mexico, according to a recent report by the International Community Foundation.

It’s not certain how many U.S. retirees are living in Mexico — a 2004 study puts it between 500,000 and 600,000 — but the foundation and other researchers say the number is bound to increase as more boomers settle into their golden years and find Mexico an affordable alternative. Almost half the retirees living in coastal areas are getting by comfortably on less than $1,000 per month, said the report, which cites the growth of real estate projects targeted at retirees as proof that expatriates are flocking south of the border.

The Billingsleys had seriously considered a retirement community with a golf course in central Arizona. But they lacked the enthusiasm for fairway living that seemed to consume retirees there. “Their entire lives were involved with golf,” Brad Billingsley said.

In 2007, the couple became expatriates and settled into a $300,000, two-bedroom beachfront condominium in Rosarito Beach, in Baja California.

They’ve made the most out of their retirement dollars, Brad Billingsley said. The cost of living — from groceries to health care — is low in their beachfront town and there’s plenty to do, such as driving down the coast to Cabo, walking on the beach and shopping at the local mercado.

The couple lived in the Bay Area for 60 years, much of it in Walnut Creek and Lafayette.

Sometimes they miss their old haunts, especially bookstores, Brad Billingsley said. But like most expatriates surveyed in the foundation report, they return often to the states. The Billingsleys make a trip across the border to San Diego every few weeks.

Affordability, quality of life, weather and proximity to the U.S. were top reasons retirees chose Mexico, according to the survey of 842 expatriates conducted by the foundation.

“After the market crash of 2008, we wanted to better understand what was going on with retirees in Mexico,” said Richard Kiy, president and chief executive officer of the foundation, a Southern California-based nonprofit that works to increase charitable giving and volunteerism across U.S. borders. In an 88-question survey of retirees 50 and older, the foundation found that expatriates had weathered the economic storm well.

A survey snapshot: Retirees’ biggest complaint is litter, while their favorite pastime is walking on the beach. More than three-quarters own a home. Almost 44 percent get by comfortably on less than $1,000 per month, and 61 percent are married — slightly less than the U.S. average of 65 percent for the same age group.

The foundation’s 17-page report, released in March, deals with demographics and day-to-day basics such as public safety concerns and household expenses of retirees in coastal areas such as Cancun, Rosarito Beach, Rocky Point and Puerto. Four follow-up studies over the next few months will tackle topics that include the impact on Mexico’s environment, health care accessibility, real estate and civic involvement by U.S. retirees.

Crime concerns affect mostly tourists

A weakening American economy, U.S. State Department travel alerts and worries about the H1N1 virus have hurt tourist travel numbers to Mexico over the past year, but the country still remains an attractive haven for retirees, said Anne McEnany, co-author of the report and the foundation’s senior adviser for environment and conservation.

Reports of narcotics-related violence, especially in border cities like Tijuana and Nogales, gave many retirees jitters initially, McEnany said. After they’ve settled into their new homes, anxiety fades away.

“They said they felt completely safe and that the media was over-hyping the narco-violence,” McEnany said. The impact was on friends and family, who changed their minds about visiting, she said.

“I’m really saddened to see coverage of (Mexican) crime in the media,” said Doug Gray, 60, a retired public safety officer from Livermore.

He and his wife Cyndi recently purchased a condominium in Manzanillo, a port city between Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco. They say they feel as safe — if not safer — walking around the mercados and boulevards as they did in Livermore.

Cyndi Gray said her best moment in Manzanillo was sitting on little plastic chairs at a cafe, watching waves roll in from the Pacific, sipping margaritas and eating coconut shrimp.

“We really love the pace,” she said. “It’s a slower pace and you can sit down there and get into the groove. I can unplug.”

The Grays have yet to live there full-time; Cyndi, 48, is still working.

Ellen Fields, another expat from California, lives in Merida, on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Her adopted city is about 22 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico — close, but not part of the coastal regions surveyed by the foundation. It has a reputation for being safe and hasn’t been affected by crime associated with border cities. “The Yucatán is not touched by that,” Fields said, adding, “I’ve never felt unsafe here.”

A self-described “dot-bomb refugee,” Fields and her husband James run yucatanliving.com, a Web site for expatriates. They moved to Merida from San Luis Obispo in 2002 and never looked back.

Ellen Fields says she’s enchanted by the Old World feel of the markets and people. “People in Yucatán are very welcoming. It’s a very gracious culture,” she said. “You walk down the street here and people say hello to you.”

One of the things she misses about California: “Mountains. It’s flat as a pancake here.”

Fields recommends living and working in Mexico, but warns that it takes a lot of planning. “You can’t come down here expecting someone to hire you,” Fields said. And learn the language, she advises.

Although Fields isn’t quite fluent, she says she can now hold a conversation without thinking about it.

About 48 percent of those surveyed in the foundation’s report were fluent or spoke intermediate-level Spanish, McEnany said. Even though many service businesses in Mexico have English speaking staffers, there’s no substitute for learning the language, she said.

Retirees may settle in only to find they can’t interact.

“They do the hobby thing and then after about a year they get bored,” McEnany said. “They are interested in getting involved in the community but they don’t have the language skills.”

One pitfall of expatriate living comes when communities “tend to circle around themselves” and don’t reach out to their adopted country, McEnany said. In addition, English-oriented businesses and the proliferation of big-box outlets like Walmart, Sam’s Club and Costco around near retirement hubs have made it even easier for Americans to isolate themselves from Mexican culture.

In the survey, about 88 percent of respondents said they feel somewhat or fully integrated into their new country. Nevertheless, most retirees continue to “see themselves as visitors in someone else’s country,” McEnany said.

The foundation is keenly interested in what U.S. retirees are doing with their time. Its chief goal is to assist American donors in charitably supporting communities abroad. The largest group of foundation donors consists of American expatriates in northwest Mexico.

Bob Hansen, 52, of Alameda said he’s aiming to retire in Manzanillo because of the community there. Like most retirees in the foundation survey, he visited several times before deciding to buy. Three years ago, he purchased a fixer-upper on the beach for $64,000.

Hansen has made many friends there and loves the lifestyle. “I have a huge pool of friends there,” he said.

He met one close Mexican friend after anchoring his sailboat close to a small village called Colimilla, near Manzanillo. A fisherman helped guide him to shore and afterward they cooled off with a cola.

“I could hardly speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English well either, but we had a connection of the souls,” Hansen said. “After the drinks, we got in his old truck and he drove all over the area showing me all the beautiful places in the area.”

Hansen purchased his home the next year and he stayed with his new friend in a nearby village while the sale cleared.

“I ended up being introduced to some of the kindest and warmest people on earth in that wonderful time I stayed in this village,” Hansen said.

Quality of life a top draw

Kathie Parker, formerly of Oakland, can attest to that. A third-generation Californian who moved in 2008 to Merida, Parker said she doesn’t miss the stress of living in the Bay Area.

“I never plan to move back to California,” she said.

Parker, 60, is a retired masseuse and moved with her partner Holly Smith in June 2008. They sold their home in Oakland and purchased a three-bedroom, three-bath home with a pool for less than $200,000.

But she insists that quality of life was her top concern. “I didn’t just choose this place because it was cheap,” Parker said. “I wanted to live here.”

She visits and talks daily with Yucatecan friends in Merida and is taking Spanish classes. Along with a group of other expats, she participated last year in a U.S. National Day of Service. They raised enough money to buy chairs and tables for a local school library.

“There are a lot of (Americans) who live here who want to make it as American as they possibly can,” Parker said. “We moved to Mexico to be with Mexicans. The people here are wonderful. You just have to try.”

If you have any questions you would like to ask Brad Billingsley you can send him an email at bradbillingsleyy@yahoo.com.

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Finally Some Good News on Travel in Mexico

Poor old Mexico. Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down! Just when the price of oil plummets, American jobs dry up, and the fear of drug violence cuts tourism in half, along comes swine flu to cut it in half again.

OK, it’s time for a little good news. In May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control lifted its recommendation against travel to Mexico; the swine flu isn’t so bad after all, and it probably didn’t come here from Mexico in the first place.

And now a little more good news. Drug violence is not a threat to ordinary tourists like you and me. This is according to the Mexican government, the U.S. State Department and me. Let me give you a little background.

I had driven to, in and around Mexico with impunity and pleasure, but that was years ago. Now I was planning two road trips, one from the border to central Mexico, another from Mexico City to Cuernavaca to Oaxaca and back, and my friends were alarmed.

“What about the drug war?”

“Aren’t you afraid of being kidnapped?”

No. At least I didn’t think so. The dangers of Mexico have always been exaggerated, and I have always taken them with a grain of salt. The drug trade is nothing new, and poor people have been kidnapping rich ones for money in the Third World and even in the First World (Italy) for a long time. Besides, I’m not rich.

Still, news reports in the weeks before I left caused my grain of salt to grow smaller. One said that President Felipe Calderon’s assault on the drug cartels had started a “civil war.” Another called the kidnappings an epidemic. A third compared Mexico to Pakistan and described it as a “failed state.” And an official at an Air Force base in New Mexico advised those in his command who planned to drive into Mexico to do so in broad daylight in caravans with cell phones at the ready.

Hmmm.

I called Sanborn’s, the American insurance people who have been providing auto insurance for American motorists in Mexico for 60 years, and asked if they advised any special precautions.

“Only to stick to main routes and not to drive at night, but that’s mainly because of animals that wander onto roads.”

“Have you had problems with tourists being held up or hijacked?”

“No. We wouldn’t be insuring them if we did.” (A review of Sanborn’s rates indicates no dramatic increases in recent months or years which would likely have occurred if theft or damage claims had gone up.)

OK. I’d go, but I’d avoid Ciudad Juarez where the violence is the worst. I’d cross the border on a Sunday morning, the quietest time in any week, and I’d do it at Laredo, where the cartels recently seemed to have called a truce.

What follows are facts, anecdotes and opinions.

Here are the facts:

Mexican highways are excellent and well-marked. Most major cities are now connected by well-engineered toll roads that have limited access and are patrolled by federal police and Green Angels, motorist-assistant trucks manned by mechanics.

Customs offices are clean and customs officials are professional and efficient. Neither used to be the case.

Gas stations are also vastly improved. Almost all now include a convenience store and some even have food courts.

And the vehicle stock is better than years ago; gone are most of the lopsided buses and one-eyed trucks of the past.

Here are the anecdotes:

David Tramp is an American who has lived in Ensenada, Mexico, for three years and sells real estate. He drives his Hummer into California through Tijuana, one of the hotbeds of drug violence, about four times a month. Has he ever had or seen any trouble? “Never.” Does he have any advice for tourists? “Stay out of high-crime areas where there are drugs and prostitutes. Common sense.”

Fiona McNeill is a school teacher in her 60s with very little Spanish who is working in a Waldorf School near San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. She drove there alone in nine days from her home in Bend, Oregon, without incident except being short-changed in a gas station.

Ramon Morales is a Harley Davidson motorcycle mechanic who came to Mexico with his pregnant wife and three-year-old daughter when he was laid off from his job in San Antonio. Despite his Hispanic name, he has red hair and a Texas twang. His wife was reluctant to come. “Now I can’t get her to go home. Hell, I gotta get back and find some work.”

Then are the drug wars a figment of someone’s imagination?

Not at all, but they are not a problem for tourists. One traveler I talked to compares them to the turf wars of inner city gangs or the internecine cocaine wars of the 1970s and ’80s in South Florida made famous in the television show “Miami Vice” and the movie “Scarface.” “People were dying all over the place, and no one stopped going to Florida.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton drew the same analogy on March 26 while speaking in Monterrey, Mexico.

Then is the press in the United States overreacting?

One observer I spoke with thought it is—at least in part in response to political pressure. Fanning the flames of the issue are the anti-immigration forces in whose interest it is to stir up fear of Mexico and Mexicans. “I think this is about ‘the fence’ that anti-immigration groups want to build from the Gulf to the Pacific. Almost no one who lives down on the border wants this wall,” he said. Indeed, Texas’s conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, has opposed the wall, and Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano once famously said when she was governor of Arizona, “If you build a 50-foot high wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder.”

But alarmist news accounts continue. A headline on an article in the San Antonio Express News in February announced, “Mexican Murders, American Victims,” and led with the statement that “230 U.S. citizens have been slain in Mexico’s escalating wave of violence since 2003.” After some alarming claims, the article implicitly admits that two-thirds of those killed were involved in the drug trade or gang activity. Many of the others were in high-crime areas. In fact, only three of the 230 deaths have resulted in protests by the U.S. State Department, seeming to support the Mexican government’s contention that “Tourists wishing to visit cathedrals, museums and other cultural centers are not at risk.” Despite the Express News’ claim that its investigation “examined hundreds of records,” it failed to report a single instance of an ordinary tourist on vacation being murdered.

A CNN report on “Anderson Cooper 360” that aired on March 5 from Rosarito Beach in Baja California, warned American students of the dangers of traveling to Mexico for spring break, reporting that 20 murders, including some beheadings, had taken place in the community in the previous year. Only late in the report and then parenthetically was it noted that none of the 20 murder victims was either American or a tourist.

I entered Mexico with considerable trepidation, sticking to toll roads and watching both my clock and rearview mirror. When I departed a month later, I did so at my leisure using secondary roads and leaving even these to explore the villages and countryside. As a motor tourist I did not feel threatened by the drug violence or kidnappings I had read and heard about. And I was able to take advantage of the very favorable exchange rate that has made Mexico once again the best travel bargain available while rediscovering that country’s charm, beauty and friendliness.

Should you go? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. As for me, I’ve already rented an apartment in San Miguel de Allende for a month early next year. I’m going back, and I’m driving.

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