Obamacare: Do Expats Need To Buy Health Insurance?

[dennisr]

Beside thinking the health care issue is all messed up, also think there is a deep cultural problem. From HBO Real Sports, commentary on America's obsession with pills. Makes one wonder what is going on.

"Modern Americans reach for a drug for any and everything – for problems real and imagined. It’s why we consume more pills than any nation on earth and why TV ads are relentlessly selling us Xarelto, Abilify, Stelara, Prodaxa, and dozens of other drugs we never ever guessed we supposedly needed.

Americans are only about five percent of the world’s population yet we take 80% of the world’s painkillers and a whopping 99% of the world’s Vicodin. We have four million kids on Ritalin, 22-million women on antidepressants, over 30-million adults on sleeping pills, 32 million on Statins, 45 million on another drug I can’t even begin to pronounce. The list goes on and on."

 

[camberiu]

Beside thinking the health care issue is all messed up, also think there is a deep cultural problem. From HBO Real Sports, commentary on America's obsession with pills. Makes one wonder what is going on.

"Modern Americans reach for a drug for any and everything – for problems real and imagined. It’s why we consume more pills than any nation on earth and why TV ads are relentlessly selling us Xarelto, Abilify, Stelara, Prodaxa, and dozens of other drugs we never ever guessed we supposedly needed.

Americans are only about five percent of the world’s population yet we take 80% of the world’s painkillers and a whopping 99% of the world’s Vicodin. We have four million kids on Ritalin, 22-million women on antidepressants, over 30-million adults on sleeping pills, 32 million on Statins, 45 million on another drug I can’t even begin to pronounce. The list goes on and on."

Very good point. Life expectancy and overall health could also be affected by the fact that almost all sugar consumed in the US is based on high fructose corn syrup, a very nasty substance, due to government imposed import barriers on regular sugar and subsidies to the corn farmers.

 

[che]

It is interesting to me that many folks like to assinate the character of those they disagree, rather than disagree on any merits.

Ron Paul was unelectable because he's a nutcase though, in some ways, he's an amiable one.

And then when asked why this particular poster has assinated the character of someone he/she obviosuly disagrees

I don't disagree with you, but can you elaborate on which of his policies were "nuts." The policies that Tex an GS pointed out seem more than reasonable to me.

I think the last GOP whack pack shows how disfunctional US politics really is. Ron Paul was the sane one of the bunch. Just like Putin is the sane one in the Syrian issue. That's the world we live in folks.

The response provided below by ajoknoblauch as to "why his policy or he is nuts" is total non-sequitor. And in so doing attacks a political philosphy trying to obfuscate from the charatcer assination he produced previously.

Paul is that rare Republican who is not wrong on everything.

After assinating the character of a medical doctor who has delivered 1000s of babies and then went to DC and shined the light on the cesspool DC is, this ajoknoblauch shows exactly what GS was saying before - the uneducated American voters are emotional not rational. They prefer to sling insults they picked up from Pelosi and Reid or Boenher etc. rather than defend their undefendable positon. This comment exchange is the perfect manifestation.

Anyone like ajoknoblauch who still buys into the left/right paradigm is obviosuly ignorant to the world we are living in. I love that in ajoknoblauch ignorance he/she is willing to come on here and pretend he/she knows what she/he is talking about when it comes to Obama care and stating "Ron Paul is nuts" or "the repubicans are wrong on everything." I often wonder if folks like ajoknoblauch can get it through their tiny heads that maybe both the republicans and democrats are wrong on everything. Pathetic souls getting screwed by both parties actually defend either? To what end? The obvious answer to any rational american is the left/right are both wrong and both together and both bad.

The democrats supported by the likes of ajoknoblauch so disdain folks like ajoknoblauch that they actually voted themselves special dispensation.

Meanwhile it appears to me the Obama care should be called the unaffordable care act for catastrophic care or just another tax to be paid to inurance companies for a system we already have and no one likes. All Obamacare is the same as we have now with the addition of a mandated tax with no guarantee that any doctor will even see you. And since the tax is mandated to a % of your income then why would insurance companies provide anything less expensive that what is mandated. A mandated tax so we can pay the very same inusurance companies for care that is less than adequate. Certainly the life expectancy of the avg american does not point to any great successes within the system. Read the link below from one who can see beyond left and right and let me lnow your thoughts...Good luck.

http://www.paulcraig...acare-a-primer/

In Buenos Aires my family pays about $4500 per year for fine care.

Frankly, I have sticker shock. We are always considering moving back to the US. So for the last 2 days I have been reasearching the plans. It appears to me that through the exchange a family at 400% of the federal poverty, about $110K annual, the price for the silver plan is 9.5% of gross income - NOT ADJUSTED - plus as a family the deductable of $9K per year. So a family earning 120K annual could be on the hoook for $21K in medical expense per year. How is that affordable? What am I missing? Enlighten me ajoknoblauch

 

[che]

I also don;t buy the fact that the European model really works.... We are seeing now SERIOUS problems popping up in France, the UK, Italy and even the Netherlands .

... and Greece, Portugal and Spain are already in massive depressions where people are in total survival mode while the gov't are trying more austerity. Think austerity will include health care for all.?

 

[che]

Obamacare has its faults, but it's a quantum improvement on what exists today.

I think you should enlighten all as to the quantum improvement over today... I have been researching and researching and can't find the benefit. But I am certiainly open to facts rather than platitudes. But what I see so far is the law give us the right to buy insurance from insurance companies with no guarantee that any doctor will accept it and no guarantee that I can actually "afford" it. Enlighten us.

 

[germano]

I think the issue is not population, but complexity of the system in question. Most European countries are much more homogeneous than the US. Just compare and contrast the differences between Cote D'azur and Normany in France vs. Alaska and Florida in the US.

Taking your example: Compare: Cote d'Azur, Paris, Bretagne, Alsace/Lorraine ... far from homogeneous.

 

[John.St]

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

Q1: Again, how will most developed nations fund free health care?
Q2: 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?
Q3: How does one solve this simple question about scarcity?

All dis here new fangled health care we have in Northern Europe causes us to be of much better health than our parents, not to mention the generation before them. I recall when I was a boy a man of my age (almost, he was 1 year younger). He looked and acted (mentally, walking, etc.) as I shall in 15 or 20 years time, and he was a standard specimen of people of his age.

Thus we need much less health care for our age than they did and (no great surprise) this reduces the cost, and at the same time the number of users grows much slower and more or less follows the number of contributors.

We pay a health care tax, 8 percent of all income including pensions, which is how we finance health care.

Q4: How do you manage that problem on a system where individual health care costs are opaque, diluted and impersonal?

Keep a close tab on the individual health care costs, which is what we do. Except for whatever "alternative medicine" people decide to buy, most medicine except low level pain killers, etc. need a prescription. Life saving medicine is for free in many (most ?) cases, if the medicine is important for your health, different percentages of the price are deducted at the pharmacy; there are a number of limits to your medicine expenses yielding at first 25%, then 50%, then 75% and at a certain level 100% of the cost (your name and soc.sec.no. on the recipe).

Q5: How do you manage that on a universal health care system with an aging population?
As described above.

The cost of our system is recalculated every year to ensure financing is in place.

- - - your turn

 

[John.St]

It is interesting to me that many folks like to assinate the character of those they disagree, rather than disagree on any merits.

It's faster and more efficient - the market shows its functionality B)

 

[camberiu]

Thus we need much less health care for our age than they did and (no great surprise) this reduces the cost, and at the same time the number of users grows much slower and more or less follows the number of contributors.

That is definitely not what reality is telling us. From The Economist, based on a World Bank report:

"[font=Lucida Sans Unicode']Across Europe, healthcare is barely managing to cover its costs. Not only are the methods for raising funds to cover its costs inadequate, but, of even greater concern, the costs themselves are set to soar. According to World Bank figures, public expenditure on healthcare in the EU could jump from 8% of GDP in 2000 to 14% in 2030 and continue to grow beyond that date. The overriding concern of Europe’s healthcare sector is to find ways to balance budgets and restrain spending. Unless that is done, the funds to pay for healthcare will soon fall short of demand.[/font]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode'][background=transparent]Read more: http://www.managemen...0#ixzz2ggLwunK3"[/background][/font]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode'][background=transparent]So let me try again:[/background][/font]

[background=transparent]In a reality of spiraling health costs in Europe, stagnant and debt ridden economies, and one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, how does continues to provide "free health care" to an aging population? [/background]

 

[che]

It's faster and more efficient - the market shows its functionality B)

True which is why Reid, Pelosi, Obama, Boehner, etc use it. And I answered my own question using GS' comment vis-a-vis the rational versus the emotional voter.

Of course I was being sarcastic b/c ajoknoblauch who has not been elected to anything actually drinks the Kool Aide of his/her almight leaders and then thinks he/she can spout it out here as if he/she were actually educated or barring that elected to something. Instead it is just noise, hot air that proves to provide no value to anyone, kind of like the Federal Govt.