The kidnapping of four American citizens and the murder of two of them in the Mexican state of Matamoros on March 3 once again exposed air power in the state of Tamaulipas, bordering the United States.
Tamaulipas is on the US State Department’s “don’t go” list due to crime and plagiarism. The State Department noted, “Criminal groups attack public and private passenger buses as well as private cars traveling in Tamaulipas, often holding passengers and demanding ransom.”
arena of criminals
Over the past decade, Tamaulipas has become a hotbed for drug trafficking organizations and other criminals, waging wars for territorial control and terrorizing the population. They also do many types of fraud for ransom. One of the drug trafficking organizations, the Gulf Cartel, operates in the city of Matamoros. The Gulf Cartel apologized for the deaths of the two Americans, a man and a woman, and handed over five of its members to local authorities. The hijacking also killed a Mexican national who was passing by and was hit by a stray bullet, said Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico.
They took the four Americans – two men and two women – from South Carolina to the city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas, apparently “to buy drugs in Mexico,” according to that country’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But relatives of the victims said the survivor, Latvia Washington McGee, had gone to Matamoros to undergo medical surgery with two friends and my girlfriend.
The tragedy in Tamaulipas also highlighted the medical tourism that many Americans indulge in and that can sometimes lead to danger.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 1.2 million Americans traveled to Mexico each year for medical treatment, said Joseph Woodman, executive director of Patients Across Borders, a company that publishes a guide to medical treatment . Currently, Woodman said “the market in Mexico is recovering rapidly, closer to pre-pandemic levels”.
Border-crossing Americans may cross the border to obtain prescription drugs or medical or dental needs. and at the same time, the constant pressure of the marketing blitz, the cult of physical beauty and the hypersexualized image, to undergo surgeries that would improve their appearance, for a fraction of what they would cost in the United States.
health crisis
This medical tourism is driven by the highest cost of medicine in the United States, where there is no public health system, where the prices of drugs and treatments are not regulated, where doctors and hospitals charge high fees, where medical insurance companies – All private – charge higher rates to their users. They are in charge by denying them many treatments or medicines. The American health care system, where everything is private, excludes those who cannot afford the high costs; That is why many seek the help of medicine abroad, which is refused at home. The tragedy of the four Americans in Matamoros once again highlighted this medical crisis in the United States. @mundiario
I invite you to read my essay on The New Macedonian Sword and the Legacy of Biden and Trump, published by World Editions.
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