Obamacare: Do Expats Need To Buy Health Insurance?

[camberiu]

Within the EU, health care is a universal, though it's handled at the level of individual countries, not localities. Düsseldorf, Nice and Liverpool do not have their own health care systems.

I meant local as by country.

 

[John.St]

The most populous state in the US, California, w/ app 38,041,000 inhabitants is less populous than Algeria (38,088,000, no. 33 on the world rank list)
- not to mention the European states:

Poland ......... app 38,380,000
Spain .......... app 47,370,000
Italy .......... app 61,482,000
United Kingdom . app 63,395,000
France ......... app 65,951,000
Germany ........ app 81,147,265

Edit:
A total of 357,725,265 as opposed to the 316,669,000 in the US of A.
/edit

 

[John.St]

I meant local as by country.

In the US health care is handled at the local level, by the individual states.

How else do you explain this:

Millions of Poor Americans Are Left Uncovered by Health Law because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans.

The Poor and Uninsured Americans Live in the 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion.

( http://baexpats.org/..._80#entry225468 )

 

[camberiu]

In the US health care is handled at the local level, by the individual states.

Medicare and Medicaid are not state programs.

 

[John.St]

Medicare and Medicaid are not state programs.

We'll try again:

How else do you explain this:

Millions of Poor Americans Are Left Uncovered by Health Law because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans.

The Poor and Uninsured Americans Live in the 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion.

 

[camberiu]

We'll try again:

How else do you explain this:

Millions of Poor Americans Are Left Uncovered by Health Law because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans.

The Poor and Uninsured Americans Live in the 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion.

Two completely unrelated issues. We are talking about the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. The point made before is that programs like Medicare and Medicaid are highly inefficient and costly because it is a highly centralized programs used to manage a very complex health program across a large and complex nation. That has nothing to do with states refusing to participate on the expansion of a Federal health program.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Two completely unrelated issues. We are talking about the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. The point made before is that programs like Medicare and Medicaid are highly inefficient and costly because it is a highly centralized programs used to manage a very complex health program across a large and complex nation. That has nothing to do with states refusing to participate on the expansion of a Federal health program.

Medicar and Medicaid have been efficient in providing essential health care services to large numbers of US citizens who would otherwise have nothing of the sort. Obamacare has its faults, but it's a quantum improvement on what exists today.

 

[John.St]

Two completely unrelated issues. We are talking about the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. The point made before is that programs like Medicare and Medicaid are highly inefficient and costly because it is a highly centralized programs used to manage a very complex health program across a large and complex nation. That has nothing to do with states refusing to participate on the expansion of a Federal health program.

Not in the least unrelated issues. Medicare and Medicaid are federal programmes administrered by the individual states.

You will not be allowed to avoid answering the question

We'll try again:

How else do you explain this:

Millions of Poor Americans Are Left Uncovered by Health Law because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans.

The Poor and Uninsured Americans Live in the 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion.

You will be haunted by this question through a so-called "Larsen-list" untill you either answer or disappear.

 

[camberiu]

You will be haunted by this question through a so-called "Larsen-list" untill you either answer or disappear.

Fair enough, once you answer this questions I asked you many pages earlier.

Yes, the current health setup in the US is awful. There are liability issues, laws that prevent sale of insurance cross state borders and the banning of the importation of generic drugs. All of these drive the costs of health up. It is a system setup to benefit the health insurance companies (just like Obamacare). It needs to be reformed and urgently. But the solution is NOT Obamacare and even less the French model. Again, how will most developed nations fund free health care? It is not an ideological question, it is a MATHEMATICAL question. How do you fund a system where the number of contributes are diminishing while the number of depends grow and the costs to care for them grows exponentially?
How does one solve this simple question about scarcity? Because that is what it is. Resources are scare and as we get older, we start to consume a dramatically higher percentage of those resources. How do you manage that problem on a system where individual health care costs are opaque, diluted and impersonal? In terms of health care expenditures, the sky is the limit. You can spend as much as you can dream of, to treat a person. How do you manage that on a universal health care system with an aging population?

 

[John.St]

Fair enough, once you answer this questions I asked you many pages earlier.

All five of them in return for one?

BTW: State participation in Medicaid is voluntary.

States may bundle the administration of Medicare together with other programs like Medicaid.

Medicare cost only 75 percent of employer-sponsored insurance.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Percapita_costs.png