We save a TON of money & get MUCH better health care by roaming the world instead of the USA.

Sad to say, but I think it will continue to get worse in America as the economy continues to decline as the dollar is still in horrible shape due to the enormous debt.

We use IMG, but pick a high deductible just like we did in the US. I think the main reason to have insurance is for asset protection in case one gets a major problem.

A friend in the US had a similar injury to my recent surgery, hospitalization in Austria. Her’s cost over $100,000. I got better care and over a week in the hospital,ambulance, tests, xrays , medicine, etc & physical therapy for a month for just $2500. It would have all been free for an Austrian.

We have had a lot of great dental work done in several countries by top dentists, for a tiny fraction of what it would cost in the US.

We were a little worried when we took off in 2006 as we did not know exactly what to expect, but the health care, costs and quality of life is soooooo much better here in Europe, it would be very hard to go back to live in the US. Most of our health care is free here & MD’s make house calls!

On top of that, I have a few fantastic alternative healers ( one is an MD/PhD who also does Chinese Medicine) that can work with us over Skype or email that have been great to have as a health resource. I will do a series on that one of these days.
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And bonus, my plan has a decreasing deductible – every 6 months it drops by $500 (down to eventually $1500), which essentially works out that most of my premiums are going towards my deductible. Which is pretty darn cool. Chris has an extra rider on his that pays upfront the first $500 of preventive care each year, and the first $5k of costs for emergency accidents (as he paramotors, he’s more likely to need medical care for that, than anything else).

When there are mandates for certain coverages – you are still paying for them via increased premiums within that state (or will eventually when they re-rate you if it’s a newer mandate). So good on you to utilize them! I do suspect that we will see increased premiums around the nation to cover all the pre-existing conditions, and requiring coverage once the HCR kicks in. The true key to reform and reducing costs is a massive sweeping change to the entire healthcare system, not just insurance. But.. one step at a time… it’s a huge complicated mess to clean up.

OK, so you probably saw me bitch about insurance on Ramona Creel’s site when she wrote about it recently. Count Jim and I in as two business owners who for the least decade, have never been able to really use our individual insurance coverage that we pay through the nose for, because we have a ten-freekin-thousand dollar deductible on it. It’s a PPO policy that is, like you said, regionally based.

As nomads, we just don’t get sick (knock wood). We’ve been to urgent care clinics that cost us much less than a doctor’s visit, which has saved our butts. But other than that, we pay for EVERYTHING. We have a policy we can’t afford to use unless we’re on death’s door. Go figure.

Now that we have a home base in Colorado, I was thrilled to learn that our new insurance company (Humana) will pay for complete physicals for both of us, including those icky scans and tests required when you get to be of a certain age. There’s no way I would them done at all if Humana didn’t pay for it, because it would’ve cost us a minimum of $3,000 to do them. So why does Humana pay for it? Because the State of Colorado is the only one in the country who now requires all health insurance companies doing business there to provide full physicals to members. Imagine that! What an awesome, real life example of government mandated health care requirements.

Still, there’s idiots screaming about social medicine and “Obama care.” Well, I assume they would rather pay for these things themselves, right? I’ll bet if these hypocrites had Humana in Colorado like we do, they’d be ALL over it.

Now, the only problem…we have to get back to Colorado to have this stuff done.

I think for those who are already covered tho, and looking to switch to a travel-friendly plan – this would be a scary route to go.

I haven’t looked very closely at it just yet, but it seems that it may be an option for travelers who are willing to domicile in FL (as many do already). I’d be really interested to hear your take on it if you have.

Your premiums sounds pretty in line with what we’re playing for our plans, which is about $3300/year combined. Considering I was paying near $6000/yr for just my small business group HMO plan, that didn’t really cover me while I traveled – I’m pretty happy with it.

We are in our late 40s, and pay about $4000 per year for the premiums for both of us for this insurance, plus the cash we put away into the HSA itself. Having been self-employed, I consider this pretty reasonable for non-group insurance.
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