www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Under the new immigration law, I understand the cost of Caja is now 12% of pension income.
You need to show $1000 month to get pensionado residency, that amounts to
$120 a month. My pension is much higher, at $2500 a month would it cost me
$300 a month for this insurance or is it caped?
If I later start receiving social security will I have to add in that additional income?
Thanks for the help.

check here for good info about residency.
http://forums.arcr.net/index.php?/forum ... nt-policy/

$200+ for Caja??? When did that change? I thought it was around $35 or something. And as I understand it Caja insurance, care etc. is pretty low end stuff. Long lines..long waits...not good access to specialists...etc. am I missing something? WTF would private insurance cost then?

I have the caja (not sure what it costs around $100) but carry private insurance on myself and 3 Ch*ldren that costs $600 per quarter and covers all of latin america and south america countries. Can increase coverage to cover usa but is not a good deal for me.

Matt, Is that an American insurance carrier?

Marlene pays the bill, but i do believe it is through INS insurance that is a government controlled entity in costa rica. I have used it on several occasions for doctors visits, pharmx, operation on two Ch*ldren and maternity. Has paid for itself many times over. PM me and i can get the contact information for you. You do need to be a resident to apply for coverage

Thanks, Matt. I was just curious. I am covered in Colombia under the EPS system, as well as in the US under my US plan. I will ask and see if that kind of coverage is available down here.

Am guessing, however, that if you have a pre-existing condition you are probably shut out of INS correct?

If you are on the caja already it is an extension of the caja. They have certain wait periods. For maternity coverage it was 10 months. For heart conditions... i think 1 year

I am not sure that is their goal. I have a friend going through the process now and will ask the lawyer that i used for my residency so we can get a more defined answer. They basically are wanting retirees to have health coverage. I find the health care to be hit or miss in Costa Rica. The new Hospital in Heredia is new and modern, as well as the Hospital in Palma Norte. San Juan Dios, Caldron Gaurdia are so so. Hospital Mexico is decent. Over all you can pay $40 out of pocket for any specialist. Lab work, MRI and xrays can get expensive.

Unfortunately, MRSA and e.dificile are becoming common in US Hospitals as well. Scary stuff caused by idiots over the decades using antibiotics for viruses for no god damn reason.

The older gent that was a long time CRT member that was mentioned in the post prior to Zun's, who passed last month, had posted here very high compliments re: his care and treatment about his 3 week stay in a CAJA hospital after he got out and said docs in his family stateside concurred.

But, Zun hit it on the head as to how this hospital born disease stuff all started, now internationally, except for the Scandanavian countries (socialized medicine) who saw this coming and mandated doc's quit prescribing anti-biotics unless clinically indicated 20-25 years ago. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/j ... -solution/
They have minimal levels last time I looked a few years ago when I was working on something. Wouldn't be surprised if their levels are higher now because these drug resistant infections can spread thru non-hospital settings, like the current pro football jock who caught MRSA in his foot in the club shower, or so they say; and then via international travelers and then into their hospitals of course.

Not sure if US docs are heeding the call to stop giving patients antibiotics for symptoms/illnesses they don't cure which is how the resistance thing starts.

MRSA (p.77 in the report linked below with 11k deaths per annum US); VRSA; C-diff (P.13 in the report linked below--14k deaths per annum US & 1 $Billion in med costs); and CRE (P.53--scary one)--if you get it your bloodstream your mortality rate is 50-50) are more often then not hospital borne infections. For a thorough 2013 look at the issues from the US Center for Disease Control see http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/. Section 3 points some of the scariest threats, not all hospital borne, what is being done, and what you can do to avoid them, other then staying out of the hospital to avoid the hospital borne ones.

Who knows how vigilant CR hospitals are in doing even the basics like docs and nurses washing hands at all the recommended times and what their MRSA VRSA C-dif rates are. I googled infectious disease and hospitals and Costa Rica and came up with a few studies but they were multi-national in which CR was included so not very helpful. One which only included 3 other countries said nurses were better then docs in handwashing but still both were deficient. For those interested, I would think maybe the Ministerio de Salud (Health Department) has some numbers? Has a website.

I know some US hospitals are putting up stainless steel skins over the drywall and ceilings in some rooms. Alot easier to clean after some poor soul who was so diagnosed bites the dust. Protocol requires thorough disenfecting of a room post mortem where there was an inf disease diagnosed.

There was a study in the highly revered New England Journal of Medicine a few years ago that showed one of the highest transporters of MRSA was on physician's neck ties. Yep.

Interesting to see on p.56 of the CDC report that there is a strain of gonorrhea obviously not hospital borne that was first fairly recently diagnosed in SanFran in guys that had been in Asia--google "Scientific American Return of the Clap".This strain is often resistant to the best drugs used for treating the clap. And you can get the clap from bbbj & dining, but some reports I read this p.m. say at lower risk then the other sex acts.

But CDC is in panic mode on this strain of the clap, working with the World Health Org. Obviously if this strain spreads and becomes completely untreatable as is their fear, look out. The clap, a vast, vast majority not the strain of clap I am talking about here, is the 2nd highest reported infectious disese: 600,000 reported US cases per annum. And didn't know until today but if you have untreated clap of any kind your odds of later getting HIV greatly increases.

Don't want to put a damper on things, just tried to provide useful info to the board.

We've all heard the horror stories--a guy I know went into the VA (not a shot at the VA, can happen in any hospital) for minor surgery and came out 11 months later. Stay out of the hospital, doctor's offices, and especially the post surgery weaning nursing homes (the worst), even visiting somebody, unless none are an option.

TB is another issue. It's coming back. See the same CDC control article I cited above. Most on this board are too young to remember when they would quarantine your ass in a TB asylum in places as big as metropolitan jails but with beds, not cells. The one in my city still sits there in mothballs decades later, and maybe they had the right idea in doing so as it turns out. In the old, old days, TB was in days of old THE equivalent of the days of old of a pandemic cholera.

And I don't doubt the previous poster's comments of a CR doc telling a patient on the way out that there is no question they got the problem and the rest of the bullshit lines from the docs, Yep, so very similar in the US. Six months later you're back in on your last breath. Most of us have been thru a family scenario with a similar fact pattern.

What is new that the previous poster was also operating "a little clinic on the coast" and in a previous post in this thread stated that he was in "practice". Those terms would leave a reader that he was a med pro of some kind.

If true, god blesss you, just doesn't jive with all the other parts of your multi-year history of posts of various time conflicting versions of your life on this board. In my poor memory alone, it starting from the banana shaking snakes out of the pods job as a teen on the docks in Limon, to traveling thru SAmerica w/ your father who killed a bandito on a boat, to your youth in SE Asia, to tours in the AF in Viet Nam, to your returning after your tour to the AF base outside of Vegas and hitting the famous cat house, not to mention Kosovo and all that, to your owning a SJ Taxi cab company of 15 cabs, but now you recently posted it was your girl friend's biz financed by "The Brothers", and I forget the rest, but there were other versions.

So forgetting that, and please forgive me if I am off on this: maybe it's all possible if you are indeed one person. So you were/are truly a licensed physician or a med school grad or a trained medical services provider of any kind anywhere so that you could say in a straight face to this board you were "in practice" and "could treat and advise people with a competent staff at a clinic on the coast?" This is the 1st time I've read this version of your incredible life.

Please forgive my doubts if all you post is true, but I would really appreciate if you could answer my few q's:

So where was the clinic? What was your training/lic? When?

Only proves again this "Doctor" is delusional and the only conversations he has is with himself.