One thing I am sure of regardless of politics, the USA has stood as a beacon of freedom from oppressive regimes. We are able to live in Jaco Costa Rica today because of the promise the USA made to Costa Rica during the birth of the second republic. This promise was made to Don Pepe Figueres and sworn with United States soldiers blood that should a foreign country invade, we, the United States would defend it. If the USA did not project its power, a promise like this would have been as worthy as piece of rice paper in a river.

We appreciate what the United States has done for Costa Rica even though many are ignorant and some spiteful for its gift. We live in relative peace and allowed to live a life of “pura vida” because Costa Ricans need not fear dictatorships to the north when the Somoza regime threatened its sovereignty with armed invasion. Costa Ricans have more teachers than soldiers because of the United States of America. Our Costa Rica children grow up here in Jaco with hope for a future that is unbounded only by their own potential and efforts.

We remember the 9/11 terrorist attacks ten year later’s and acknowledge the gift and sacrifice the United States has made for Costa Rica to be free and at peace.

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As Costa Rica is a tropical climate country and temperatures are high all year long, this is an ideal place for visitors who come from cold weather trying to flee the winter for sunny vacations. Many Americans travel to Costa Rica when looking to take a vacation “on the beach” and get away from the cold.

It is unfortunate therefore; that people aren’t aware of the other aspects Costa Rica has to offer its visitors. In addition to its amazing wildlife in the national parks, the active volcano and the country’s gorgeous beaches and legendary weather, the Costa Rican healthcare system has rapidly developed and the country is also known today as a leading medical tourism destination. As such, Costa Rica also offers very advance state-of-the-art private medical centers to Costa Ricans as well as inbound medical tourists.

It may surprise some, but Costa Rica has become a desired and popular medical tourism hub attracting thousands of medical tourists every year. They are coming in for all kinds of different medical treatments, starting from necessary surgery to elective procedures and prolonged treatments. This also includes the very popular field of plastic surgery.

Medical Tourism
Before we delve into the Costa Rican medical tourism industry and the cosmetic surgery options in the country, let us begin by answering the basic question of “What is medical tourism”. “Medical Tourism” is a term describing the phenomena of patients traveling across national borders in order to receive medical treatments. Although this may sound like a fairly new global trend, it has been documented that people have been traveling for medical purposes for centuries now.

The modern medical tourism industry, which has developed in the past couple of decades, has blossomed thanks to the immense improvement in global travel means along with the internet making the world grow smaller. Thanks to this new global reality, patients who were unable to receive proper medical care in their own country could now explore the option of traveling across national borders to and receiving the medical care they need.

There are several reasons patients are suddenly looking outside their home country for treatments, the first being patients having improper medical insurance (or none at all), leading to the fact that they aren’t able to afford surgery they need. Another reason is long waiting lists that can sometimes lead to patients waiting for months and even years to undergo a specific medical procedure. Or it can simply be patients who would rather travel to destinations with better or more advanced medical technology and research in a specific medical field.

Considering the proximity between North America and Costa Rica, combined with the advance medicine being practiced in the country, there is no surprise that Costa Rica has become a popular medical tourism destination.

Plastic Surgery in Costa Rica

A particular medical discipline that has become extremely popular in Costa Rica among inbound medical tourist is the field of plastic surgery. As plastic surgery isn’t normally covered under medical insurance plans, a procedure of this sort can cost quite a bit for patients. For this reason, patients may look elsewhere for this option, as they will seek high medical quality for a lower price and a close destination (if possible).

Costa Rica is a great choice for North Americans. On the one hand, medical centers in Costa Rica have been developing and blossoming, realizing the needs of global patients to travel to other countries for medical purposes and working to
raise medical standards and practice medicine at the highest level. On the other, Costa Rica is just a short flight away and the capital of San Jose has many culture similarities, as well as most medical staffs speak English, making it easy on patients.

Regularly, the recovery process for cosmetic procedures is not as long and tough and as other surgery recoveries; thus patients are more comfortable to fly abroad for these types of operations. Patients are flying in to Costa Rica for just about any type of plastic surgery available. This includes breast augmentation, lifts, reductions and enlargement, facelifts and other facial procedures, tummy tucks, liposuction and more.

Patients will land in the country and head for the medical center where they will be accepted by the attending physician, as they will start preparing for the procedure with preliminary checkups, leading to surgery with a matter of a day or two. Once done, patients will be able to recuperate in first class accommodations. After that patients are free to enjoy a vacation in the beautiful country.

There are many private hospitals in Costa Rica, serving medical tourists from around the world in the highest medical standard possible. “La Clínica Católica Hospital”, that has a first class hotel inside its facilities, is just one of many advanced medical centers that provide western standard medicine.

If you are looking into cosmetic surgery abroad, be sure to check Costa Rican hospitals in your medical tourism research. Good luck.

This Article has been written by Stuart Ben, A professional medical tourism facilitator. You can read more about medical tourism in Costa Rica.

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In a recent study carried out by the Ibero American Research, Marketing and Consulting Consortium (CIMA), Costa Rican president Oscar Arias ranked 4th in popularity.  The study was carried out among 11, 954 people above 18 years of age in 20 American countries.

The survey took place from March 15th through April 15th, 2009 and was published in Bogota, Columbia on Friday April 17th, 2009.

The first place in popularity went to the recently appointed U.S president Barack Obama with 85% of the votes in his favor.  Second place went to the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe with 74% of the votes while the third place went to Brazilian head of state Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva with 73% of the votes.

Oscar Arias received 66% of the votes in his favor followed by Fernando Lugo from Paraguay.  According to the survey, the least popular head of states were Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez in last place followed closely by Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega.

This is Oscar Arias’ second run as president of Costa Rica since his first 4-year term in 1984 – 1988.  Arias is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1987 after his efforts in bringing peace to the continuing Central American wars.

Costa Rica is located in Central America and is a strong tourist destination offering numerous pristine beaches, volcanoes, rainforest as well as flora and fauna.  Jaco Costa Rica hotels vary from the B&B style to beach resorts. There is something for everyone and every budget.

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While Costa Rica enjoys the accolades it did not take the journal to announce its number one pick for safety to get the interests of CEO’s.  Large conglomerates and multinational corporations have long understood that Costa Rica has a climate for corporate regional headquarters and fabrication plants. While safety helps the peace of mind for families of executives working here, Costa Rica’s safety helps the bottom-line by reducing the expensive security details.  Plus, the Costa Rican government has gone out of its way to set up tax free zones, which provides the surrounding areas with good jobs and stable salaries.  Companies such as Intel, Hewlett Packard, Sony Ericsson, and many others have invested heavily to take advantage of this stable democracy in the tropics of Central America.

To provide a perspective, Costa Rica has the lowest risk concerning safety and security of business executives, while Colombia and Venezuela have the highest risk.

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These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system.

Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

Combining key jobs
The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: “In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodriguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodriguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”

As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydroelectric, wind and geothermal power, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment. Rodriguez also helped to pioneer the idea that in a country like Costa Rica, dependent on tourism and agriculture, the services provided by ecosystems were important drivers of growth and had to be paid for. Most countries fail to account for the “externalities” of various economic activities. So when a factory, farmer or power plant pollutes the air or the river, destroys a wetland, depletes a fish stock or silts a river, the cost is never added to your electric bill or to the price of your shoes.

Costa Rica took the view that landowners who keep forests intact and rivers clean should be paid, because doing so benefits dam owners, fishermen, farmers and eco-tour companies downstream. The forests also absorbed carbon. To pay for these environmental services, in 1997 Costa Rica imposed a tax on carbon emissions — 3.5 percent of the market value of fossil fuels — which goes into a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them. And the country imposed a water tax whereby major water users — hydroelectric dams, farmers and drinking water providers — pay villagers upstream to keep their rivers pristine. “We now have 7,000 beneficiaries of water and carbon taxes,” said Rodriguez. “It has become a major source of income for poor people. It has also enabled Costa Rica to actually reverse deforestation. We now have twice the amount of forest as 20 years ago.”

Nature’s value
As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire. We end up impoverishing both nature and people. Worse, we start racking up a bill in the form of climate-changing greenhouse gases, petro-dictatorships and biodiversity loss that gets charged on our kids’ Visa cards to be paid by them later. Well, later is over. Later is when it will be too late.

Thomas L. Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

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JACO & HERMOSA RECEIVE BLUE FLAG

For the second consecutive year, the city of Jaco recently received the Blue Flag award along with the surfing beach of Playa Hermosa, the site of the BILLABONG ISA 2009 WORLD SURFING GAMES.

In order to receive the Blue Flag award, the quality of water, the solid waste management systems, the signaling of roads, the environmental education and public safety are all evaluated.  The city council, local businesses and members of the community all worked together to ensure that the requirements were met and that Jaco was able to renew their accreditation. 

Sonia Alvarado, the President of the Blue Flag Committee in Jaco and Peter Van Hussen, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce attended the awards ceremony at the offices of the Institute of Aqueducts and Sewage Authority (AyA) in Pavas on March 24th.  The mayor of Garabito, Don Marvin Elizondo said “We received the news with great satisfaction reinforcing the hard work that has been ongoing in Jaco for preparation of the World Surfing Games.

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Efforts to ease global impacts on local economies is producing some interesting results

In the midst of a global financial meltdown, authorities of the Central American Integration System (CAIS) have moved on to implement a series of changes in the region’s economy to confront the crisis.

CAIS has stated that the region will seek to create a regional currency as well as new laws and an investment infrastructure in order to prepare for the effects the economic crisis may have on the region.  The new provisions will also focus on Central America’s banking system to prepare it for the arrival of foreign bank investments.

During last year’s summit in San Pedro Sula, Honduras the heads of the Central American governments agreed on taking action that would give the region’s citizens a sense of identity and unity. Amongst this idea, they even are considering approval of issuing a Central American passport along with the currency.

Global economists have stated that the financial crisis will probably continue for a few more years and that the least prepared economies will suffer the worst.  During the summit, members from the countries of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Dominican Republic reported slight decrease in its economic indicators. While further to the south, countries such as Chile and Peru have had positive economic results for the past few years and many Central American governments are looking to them for ideas on how to boost domestic production and insulate the local economy from international stagnation.

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Costa Rica Medical Tourism – Dental Implants

Dental implants in Costa Rica is very popular for USA travelers that want to undergo inexpensive cosmetic dentistry. Dentists in Costa Rica are fully educated and certified by a national medical association. All are experienced in the latest and most advanced cosmetic surgery and non-surgical processes requireded for the patients medical procedure. Patients who plan to undergo affordable elective dentistry or other dental procedures in Costa Rica must investigate and consult the Costa Rica Plastic Surgery Board to verify the reliability of the practioner in Costa Rica that will perform their medical procedures. The association has listings of legal physicians for the patients verification.

Costa Rica Medical Tourism – Dental Implants Recovery

A normal scenario for Costa Rica medical tourism is to travel down to Costa Rica and stay in the country at least one week to receive their dental implant surgery, then recuperation and then travel the country. Usually, patients stay , for 7-10 days, enough time to for recovery while enjoying leisure and relaxing trips. Many times the first days are spent sightseeing, followed by the planned affordable dentistry in Costa Rica and then some more sightseeing during the dental implant recovery phase. High quality dentistry in Costa Rica can save recipients more than 50% of the original cost if taken in the U.S. or Canada. Currently a full row of dental implants costs in the U.S. approaches $8,000 while in Costa Rica, the same procedure with same outcome runs about $2750. Click here for information about Costa Rica dental implants.

Check back for more articles about Costa Rica medical tourism here in Costa Rica on The Jaco Blog

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Costa Rica will attempt to mitigate the effects of the global economic crisis by authorizing the Costa Rica Tax Administration to offer a special accelerated depreciation for all new assets from 50% tio 60%. This measure applies to all new assets purchased from January 2009 until the end of the fiscal year. The move comes as part of President Arias’s new “Shield Plan” where he hopes to protect the country from recession by implementing a series of temporary fixes to promote commerce and protect Costa Rican jobs.

Accelerated depreciation refers to any one of several methods by which a business depreciates a fixed asset in such a way that the amount of depreciation taken each year is higher during the earlier years of an asset’s life. For tax purposes, accelerated depreciation provides a way of deferring business income taxes by reducing taxable income in current years, in exchange for increased taxable income in future years.

According to the Costa Rica Tax Administration, the accelerated depreciation is a smart move to confront the weakening economy by promoting investment because this measure allows companies a larger deduction when determining how much income tax is due. This should help soften the decision to acquire new assets when the world’s economists are telling people to put off big purchases for later.

Once this resolution is published in “La Gaceta” it won’t be necessary for companies to specifically request authorization to use the special accelerated depreciation from the Tax Administration. The only requirement is that the owner prove that the assets were acquired during 2009.

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