Mexico's Seguro Popular, Argentina's Elections, IPEF, and Sri Lanka's Alcohol Policies
November 17, 2023
Editor's Note
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Seguro Popular, Mexico's universal health coverage program that expanded access to health care for more than fifty-five million previously uninsured Mexicans. Mexico closed the program in 2020, after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned on the program's inadequacy and domination by private interests. As Mexico navigates its post–Seguro Popular health system reform, this week's first group of authors—Tim McDonald, Michael Touchton, Felicia Marie Knaul, Héctor Arreola-Ornelas, and Mexico's former Minister of Health Julio Frenk—summarize their recent Lancet study on the program's successes and failures, and the hard work that lies ahead.
Staying in Latin America, Carlos Javier Regazzoni, director of the Argentine Council on Foreign Relations' human security and global health committee, writes on what Argentina's November 19 presidential election could mean for the country's struggling health-care system.
Next, CFR Senior Fellow David P. Fidler examines the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), a U.S. initiative to increase economic engagement in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China's ambitions in that region. Fidler explores how the IPEF reflects changes in the relationship between trade and health emerging from U.S. domestic opposition to trade agreements, geopolitical competition between the United States and China, and the COVID-19 and climate change crises. Whether the IPEF can deliver geopolitical benefits remains unclear, but Fidler argues that the framework can still support trade actions helpful for addressing health threats associated with pandemics and climate change.
Our last piece focuses on an innovative solution to Sri Lanka's economic crisis: an alcohol tax. The authors, who include the executive director of Sri Lanka's Alcohol & Drug Information Center, argue that increasing alcohol taxes would reduce consumption, improve health outcomes, and increase government revenue, aiding economic recovery. The International Monetary Fund has likewise pressed the government to raise alcohol taxes. Whether Sri Lanka decides to move forward will be determined when the 2024 national budget is finalized next month.
As always, thank you for reading.—Thomas J. Bollyky, Editor
Mexico's government worked with civil society institutions to enroll more than fifty-three million people in health-care plans in the first ten years of Seguro Popular
