Yeah, But Do You Have Insurance? – A Binational Comparison of Healthcare Access for Older Mexicans; United States versus Mexico

Jennifer J. Tovar, University of Texas at Austin

This paper will present findings from the quantitative analysis for healthcare coverage on Activities of Daily Living for older Mexicans with diabetes who live in the United States and Mexico. The data that will be used for this paper is the Mexican Health and Aging Survey and the Hispanic Established Population of Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly. However, adding healthcare type and migration have no effect on this relationship. Despite variation in access to healthcare that Mexicans in either country this does not appear to negatively impact their ability to perform basic tasks associated with daily living for diabetics. Furthermore, if one has a chronic illness, such as diabetes, it makes no difference which country they are in terms of healthcare; they will be worse off than their counterparts.