Lester Troyer, an Amish construction worker from near Mansfield, Ohio,
said he was in Tijuana for low-cost medical care with friends, all
without health insurance. Their van was stopped and searched for drugs
by federal police; they were released without incident. "They were
nice," he said.
Here is the story, most of which concerns Tijuana, not Lester.
When I read of “low-cost medical care” in Tijuana I thought immediately of Dr. Nick “Hi everyone!” Riviera.
Most Plain people (traditional Amish and Mennonites) don’t have medical insurance–partly because they are poor, partly because they are self-employed, and largely because they have historically opposed insurance. It is quite common for us to go to Mexico for medical care that can be pre-scheduled, such as surgery; it often costs less than half what it does in the US.
The only time I’ve been to Tijuana I was driving around at night just checking it out and I went the wrong way down a 1 way street by accident. A cop stopped me and started to search my car, which was packed for a round the country road trip. I had a couple paintball guns in there, and when he found them he said guns are illegal in Mexico. I said they were not real guns and he said he knew that but they were still illegal and I would need to go to jail. Instead he ended up just taking the guns (worth about $400 in the US), and saying I needed to pay $40 for the ticket which I could either pay him in cash or go down to the station if I needed a receipt (gee tough decision!). So I paid the $40 and got off realtively easy.
At the time my friend was on a charter fishing boat in the Pacific, and was set to return the next morning to a dock in San Diego where I’d pick him up. We had no cell-phones or other contacts, I didn’t know the name of the company, and we were 3000 miles from home. If I had been detained in Mexico he would have been completely stranded with no clue.
medical insurance
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