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[quote=”maravilla”]you cannot become a legal resident without joining the CAJA. and if all you have in income is less than $1000 a month, you won’t be able to get legal residency here anyway,…[/quote]
That is not true for pensioners. I got my cedula as a pensioneer before the law changed. Then I joined CAJA.
[i]”That is not true for pensioners. I got my cedula as a pensioner before the law changed”[/i] and with the new laws, residency is now required [b]prior[/b] to joining CAJA.
dona laura chinchilla has so much faith in the caja system that she uses private hospital
i think it was hospital metropolitano
caja is a coin toss…
[quote=”barbaracjohnson”] I live desperately on $964 social security a month. CAHA $60 a month. I’ve been told the cost of CAJA should be less. Have I been scammed? I do not know. What would private insurance be? At 77+, I am lucky I’ve not experienced illnesses or accidents.[/quote]
I don’t think you have been scammed as much as it seems there is no logic to how much is charged for CAJA. My wife joined CAJA for $26.50 per month at age 59, I am charged $66.50 at age 68 a year later. Go figure…does it have to do with your age on applying?…who knows.
I would check with ARCR as Maravilla suggests to see what they can do for you. Cost of membership in ARCR is $100 per year. If M. is right you save $180 per year on CAJA.
Personally, I have no use for ARCR. Our situation is much different from the average expat in the help we get from the locals that saves us tremendously. 😀
i thought it was $50 to join ARCR if you were a single person.
My husband and I pay C19,000 for caja. but just like all the other medical plans we’ve had, we hardly ever use it. knock on wood.
orcas06: Why not CIMA?
I was treated there twice, once for an emergency and both times the care and quality of the docs was very good. I had some issues during the night while staying nearby at a hotel and the DR. returned calls to me twice, it was after 2am.
I lived in NYC for 30 years and for the most part hospitals were hit or miss. As Maravilla points out there is no shortage of mishaps in US hospitals. Like anywhere else you have to do your research to identify the best, I don’t think generalizing is very helpful.
My one experience with the CAJA was acceptable, though the biggest problem was my lack of speaking/understanding Spanish. It is very difficult and frustrating for both the patient and the staff.
The secret, in my opinion, is to keep all your options open. For emergency care, I’d begin with the CAJA hospital in Grecia because it’s the only readily accessible alternative for us. And as legal residents, we’re enrolled in the CAJA system via ARCR.
For definitive or specialty care, we want to keep our options open, so while we might opt for care within the CAJA system, we might also go outside to the private sector. It is for that reason that we continue to shop for an affordable catastrophic health insurance policy that would cover us here.
And, if time were not urgent, I’d leave open the option of returning to the U.S. where we maintain Medicare and Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage.
In my exposure to health care in the U.S., I’ve seen a fair amount of bad practice. The one rule of thumb we live by is to keep our options open and to leave ourselves every opportunity to doctor shop. Just because someone has studied here or there, and just because s/he is affiliated with this hospital or that, doesn’t assure that s/he is competent.
As for ARCR, the annual dues are $50US for the first person and $10 for each additional family member. If you’re over 55, the monthly family CAJA enrollment cost is $49.
those are all good ideas, david. i still have medicare in the states were i not able to get appropriate care here, and if those two were not viable options for some reason, i could always go to italy and get treatment. like you, for an emergency i would have to rely on my local hospital. i am more than an hour away from any of the other facilities mentioned.
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