Healthcare in Central America

there may be a thread about this from the past, if so someone can post the link to help me.

My question is for the people on this forum who work and/or live in Central America, like Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Antigua & Barbuda, the Antilles, and places like that.

Is healthcare a government run type thing? Do you just find whatever Doc you can and pay cash? What if you are a US citizen and visiting, can you get healthcare cheap? or do you have to pay alot for it because you aren't a native citizen.

speaking strictly for Costa Rica, there are both systems , public and private

public is good when you are REALLY screwed , say , you need a transplant

for everything else you are better of with private medicine

you can get attention simply by paying, some doctors (all?) may charge you more is we all 'know' that 'Gringos have lots of money'

but still it will be much cheaper than paying upfront for it in the US

Medical tourism is having a bonanza and the goverment is actively promoting it

btw, from those places you list, Antigua and Nicaragua are quite behind CR and Panama when it comes to capabilities/quality of the facilities

thanks, i have always been curious , cause i can't afford healthcare here in the states it's to much for my medical history, and if something huge was to ever happen like cancer or something, i've always wondered if just going to another country and let their government run HC take care of me would be better off than racking up millions in bills that i would never/could pay.

I remember hearing a while back that a triple bypass costs around 30k down here. For you to be able to use the HC of a different country, obviously you would have to move there as a resident, sign up and then get in.

When my dad had a series (5, 6 I dont remember how many) of prostate cancer related surgeries.....he had a 'neighbor' who was a Costa Rican that lived in the US but apparently he couldnt afford the surgeries for his condition up there so he moved back for a couple months, signed up for goverment-run system and got it (the rooms in public hospitals have quite a few patients in, think about it as 'halls')

Thing is, in most cases you can't just 'decide' to move to 'x' because you 'felt like it'

so I imagine that in most cases you would have to go to private doctors, a private hospital won't even give you the time of the day until you have made a deposit for certain amount with either cash or credit card

i figured there would be some kind of thing like i had to live there for x amount of time and whatnot.

i've kinda looked into the Canadian thing before, since they are only like 6 hours away (to Windsor across from Detroit), i've always wondered about applying for a work visa there and then get it and still live here and/or move up there and get some random job for a month , and then move back here, and then go back and just keep doing that. And possibly find someone up there to let me use there address as a home address yet live down here and whatnot.

More than likely though, if anything major was to happen, i'd probably just let them try and fix me up here and just rack up the bills and if by chance they fix me , then i'll move to Central America or Canada and live there and if anything happens they can fix me then.