Long Ride to Los Algondones

Mexico sends us its poor, downtrodden and desperate. They come across the river, through the desert, under the fence, over the razor wire, to work in our restaurants, our farms, our meatpacking plants, our backyards, our nursing homes. They willingly do hard, unpleasant, and dangerous labor for wages that most Americans scoff at.

Mexico is a nation rich in history, culture, natural resources, and political corruption. In Mexico, the gap between wealthy and poor is startling.

And so, they come across our common border to do the work we are unwilling to do.

Mexico may live in the long wide shadow cast by the United States, but when it comes to medical care, Mexico gets the last laugh. Mexican towns like Los Algondones become destinations, magnets, for American tourists who cannot afford prescription drugs, dental work, eyeglasses or basic medical care on the red, white and blue side of the border.

For $135, you can hop on an air-conditioned Santa Barbara Airbus with your prescription drug or basic medical needs, and the next day spend five solid hours in Los Algondones getting them filled -- in a foreign country that most Americans think of as desperately poor; in a foreign country we blame for our “immigration” problem; in a foreign country that we have historically exploited and treated with contempt.

Take a moment to allow the irony of that to soak in.

By world standards, Americans are wealthy and we meet our basic human needs with relative ease. But when it comes to medical care, Americans are lost in an ideological wilderness, forever arguing about capitalism versus “socialized” medicine, free markets versus government regulation, and forever missing the humane, moral point that access to medical care is an essential human right, not a privilege of birth or wealth.

Poor Mexico exports its human capital -- the aforementioned day-laborers, dishwashers, gardeners, mechanics and home health care workers -- that we cannot do without, and imports gringos who can’t afford prescription drugs or dental work on this side of the border. What’s wrong with this picture?

Even a “backward” nation like Mexico understands that health care for human beings cannot be left to the prejudices and vagaries of the “free” market. In the industrialized world, only the United States clings to the fantasy that the for-profit market can deliver medical care for all.

We are so completely twisted that we allow insurance companies to make medical decisions, to override trained professionals, and to deny care so that they may profit. We are so twisted that we cannot even engage in a rational conversation about medical care without the profiteers springing from the woodwork to scream “socialized medicine!” “waiting lists!” “higher taxes!” We are so twisted, that a conversation that should be about health and sickness, life and death, becomes instead a conversation about dollars and cents.

Consequently, we pay more and get less, and millions of us go without because the cost is too high.

And some of us get on the bus and take the long trip Los Algondones.