Legal Online Poker Mexico

In September 2010, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld a law making playing poker online a felony.
On April 15, 2011, in U. S. v. Scheinberg et al. (10 Cr. 336), the Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down three major poker .com websites of Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, and Absolute Poker, and seized several of their bank accounts. A grand jury has charged 11 defendants, including the founders of the poker sites, with bank fraud, money laundering, and violating gambling laws. The prosecutors are claiming that the sites tricked and bribed U.S. banks to receive profits from online gambling, an act that violated UIGEA. The same day, former Senator D’Amato released a comment on behalf of the PPA. He asserts that, “Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.” D’Amato made no comment on the specific charges raised but promised a response once the “full facts become available.” He responded in the Washington Post on April 22. The actions by the Department of Justice were also criticized by gaming law experts, including Professor I. Nelson Rose.”

If you want to keep on playing Online poker legally, just relocate to Rosarito Beach with all the amenities of a five star resort at a fraction of the cost, just 20 minutes south of the border and totally safe. Just call or email Miguel Sedano 858-433-0561 info@rentinginmexico.com for complete information. www.RentingInMexico.com

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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TIJUANA — About 1 million adult Californians seek health care in Mexico each year – and that figure is likely growing as the recession expands the ranks of the uninsured who are drawn to cheaper care south of the border, said the lead researcher of the first major report on the topic released Tuesday.

The pharmacy business in Tijuana is still booming, despite crackdowns by the state to weed out illegitimate operators. - John Gibbins / Union-Tribune

These people live from the Bay Area to San Diego County. Most come to Mexico for prescription drugs and dental care, and a smaller number go for surgeries. Beyond finances, other factors prompting individuals to head south include language and cultural barriers.

Living within 15 miles of the border also greatly increases the likelihood of someone obtaining health services in Mexico.

Angela Tapia, 45, of San Ysidro crosses the border several times each year to see her gynecologist. She also had back surgery in Tijuana a decade ago.

“It’s cheaper to go there,” said Tapia, who doesn’t have health insurance. “When you go to those doctors, they give you time, they ask a lot of questions and they care about you.”

Roughly half of the cross-border patients are Mexican immigrants, a statistic that might challenge the popular notion of Mexicans burdening California’s hospitals and clinics by receiving all of their health care on this side of the border, said UCLA public health professor Steven Wallace, lead author of the new report.

“What this helps document is that (some) immigrants are facing barriers to receiving care in the United States, and they are turning to Mexico for that care,” said Wallace, who also serves as associate director of UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research. “And it’s not just immigrants facing barriers here.”

Approximately half a million U.S. citizens living in California also seek health services in Mexico, Wallace and his UCLA colleagues found.

Altogether, about 4 percent of adult Californians traveled to Mexico for some type of medical care.

Wallace’s study was published Tuesday in Medical Care, a journal for the American Public Health Association.

He and his fellow researchers based their analysis on data from the 2001 California Health Interview Survey, which questioned more than 55,000 random households across the state.

The wide-ranging survey, conducted once every two years, is funded by a coalition of agencies and groups including the state Department of Public Health, the National Cancer Institute and the California Endowment. Those done since 2001 have not asked about accessing health care south of the border.

Wallace’s group was the first to delve deeply into the statistics on medical treatment in Mexico. Previous research relied on anecdotal accounts or small localized populations.

The cross-border trend likely will intensify as the number of Mexican immigrants living in California increases and the recession costs more people their jobs and health insurance coverage, Wallace said.

Between 2001 and 2007, the population of Mexican immigrants in California grew by 756,000 to 4.6 million, according to the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.

“The numbers that are bad in this study have only gotten worse,” said Margaret Laws, director of the California HealthCare Foundation’s Innovations for the Underserved program. “Under the current climate, they will continue to get worse.”

The UCLA researchers found that more than 13 percent of Mexican immigrants traveled to Mexico for care, with the largest number visiting dentists.

Such patients make up the diverse range of U.S. residents who visit the Bartell Dental Clinic on Avenida Revolucion in the heart of Tijuana’s tourist district, said Dr. William Bartell Jr.

“Probably 95 percent of my clientele are self-employed or their jobs don’t provide any dental insurance,” he said.

The clinic, which has a Web site that targets Americans, sees about 10 patients a day – nearly all from north of the border. That’s enough to keep three full-time and several part-time dentists busy, Bartell said.

Mexican immigrants who lived in California for less than 15 years were less likely to cross the border for care than those who had been in the country longer, the UCLA report said. Many shorter-term immigrants are undocumented, so they face risks every time they leave the United States and try to return.

Among all other Californians, the top health-related reason for going to Mexico was to purchase prescription drugs.

Much attention has been given to doctors performing cosmetic and weight-loss surgeries on Americans in Mexican cities such as Tijuana. But Wallace found that only 7 percent of the 464,000 non-Latino Californians who sought treatment across the border went there for medical procedures, including surgeries and treatments for serious illnesses like cancer.

Health insurers offering relatively low-cost coverage plans that allow Southern Californians to receive care on both sides of the border should be encouraged by the study’s findings, Wallace said.

In fact, several of the largest players in the cross-border insurance market have recorded steady growth in recent years.

Membership in Health Net’s U.S-Mexico plan has reached 40,000, up from 23,700 in late 2007, said Brad Kiefer, a spokesman for the health maintenance organization.

Sistemas Medicos Nacionales S.A., the only Mexican HMO licensed to operate in California, now has about 21,000 members in San Diego and Imperial counties, said Christina Suggett, the company’s chief operating officer.

Staff writer Sandra Dibble contributed to this report.

Keith Darcé: (619) 293-1020;

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How Americans are Stretching Their Money South of the Border in Baja California, Mexico

ROSARITO, BAJA CALIFORNIA. MEXICO – Many Americans with reduced and fixed incomes are looking outside of the US for retirement and economic relief in these tough times, finding it just south of the border. Baja California, Mexico is leading the trend to cater to retirees, by offering services that appeal to the growing number of foreign residents. These services include assisted living, property and personal care among others at significantly lower prices than in the US.

US store names like Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Smart and Final, Applebee’s and Ashley Furniture are some of which are becoming more common in strip malls around the area. State of the art medical facilities equal to those on the US have been and are being constructed in order to provide quality medical care services to the growing number of foreign residents, the only difference being the lower cost.

The area between Rosarito and Ensenada just 45 minutes south of the border has become the preferred area, for new Baja real estate where developers are also getting on board by bringing amenities to these new homeowners. Calafia Condos & Villas is one of these developments, where their new tower offers more amenities and social atmosphere for people with an active lifestyle. Plus, it is pet friendly. Some of these amenities include a club house with a TV room, game room, computer area, large gym, outdoor and a private Jacuzzi. These amenities are becoming standard for new communities. Palacio Del Mar, Luxury Ocean Front Condos & Villas, has built the first 25,000 square ft ocean front club house, that will not only have an ocean front infinity pool, spa, saunas, gym and bistro, they also offer an indoor granite bottom pool.

A current resident of Northern Baja, Karen Erstad says “I purchased a second home in Las Gaviotas , (an established Northern Baja community), over 10 years ago with the intent to someday live my retirement years by the Ocean”. When she decided on early retirement and make her move, her family and friends thought she was not on her right mind. Even though she would be only a 2 hour drive away, their primary concern was medical care and the question of who would look after her.

Some doctors in this Rosarito-Ensenada area are willing and do still make house calls; there are also excellent medical facilities throughout the state. Serena Senior Care is a corporation dedicated to improve the quality of life for senior residents in Baja; among their services are nursing assistance and doctor visits, which gives family members’ peace of mind. In addition, ocean front developments in Baja are largely inhabited by expatriates making them very tight communities, who look out for one another.

Karen continues by adding “I can also put my own concerns at ease, by moving to Mexico I can live the same lifestyle if not a better one as if I were still working”.

Karen is one of many Americans discovering the benefits and lower cost of in-home services that the Northern Baja region offers; furthermore, with the increased purchasing power of the US dollar against the Mexican peso they can lower their monthly expenses considerably, here is an example:

• Grocery bill around 250 dollars a month for a small family.
• Cost of a movie for two people from less than 11 dollars including popcorn.
• Doctor’s visits starting at around 20 dollars.
• Internet Access and Cable TV from 60 dollars.
• Property taxes average 300.00 dollars and up per year.
• Game of golf starting at 35 dollars
• Private bilingual school around 175 dollars monthly tuition
• Hair Salon hair cut and color can start at around 27 dollars
• Eating out
• McDonalds, less than 4.50 for a super size combo
• Chinese food, less than 4.50 for a “lunch” (enough for 2 people)
• Traditional Mexican food, complete meals from around 4 dollars.
• 5 star meal starts at 20 dollars per person.

Most of these coastal Baja developments, like Calafia Condos & Villas are also located just 10 to 15 minutes from the newest hospital in the area. Downtown shopping, and a 45 minute drive to the wine country, where on Wednesdays and Saturdays they offer an organic farmers market. Living in these communities Americans have the same lifestyle as they currently have back at their homeland but for much less.

Max Katz owner of Baja Real Estate Group says “Due to the entire housing inventory on the coast, developers set themselves apart by offering more amenities, services and discounts”. He continues saying, “Not only the newer developments are following the trends, even long time established communities such as Las Gaviotas, an ocean front community that has been a model of success for retirees over the last 35 years, are upgrading to larger gyms, creating social committees and having weekly golf and tennis tournaments”.

Clearly, relocating to Northern Baja California has become a solution for Baby Boomers and American retirees against the economic crisis. Especially for those who would like to remain closer to their families and amenities in the US. For others, is just good business.

Written by Alejandra Esquivel

Original Source: How Americans are Stretching Their Money South of the Border in Baja California Mexico