They are fighting for reinstatement of portable Medicare, which although we have paid into all our lives we cannot use here. The only country that does this.

It's not the only country that does that. Germany does the same thing with its expatriates. In Germany you have a sort of public health insurance for all, one that you have to have, unless you can prove you make enough money to pay for a private health insurance and are covered under one (much more expensive). Through your whole life this public health insurance in Germany is there for you, adapted to your income and status, from student, to working under an employer and as a retiree, always adjusted what sort of income you have. It's a good plan, and most Germans have no idea what they have in that plan, before they lose it or live overseas.

So, before I came to the US in 1982 I had such German public health insurance. When you work in Germany, you are not really aware of what and how much it costs to be covered. Half of the premiums are covered by the employer (or if you are unemployed fully), the other half is deducted automatically from your monthly pay and most of the time you don't pay attention of how much that is, when you are a German.

But you lose the right to re-enter that health insurance, when you are overseas (out of Germany) for more than 10 years. And they don't cover you outside of Germany (there have been several changes within the last twenty to thirty years, I think they cover you within EU countries. So a German, working in France, still was covered by the German health insurance, I believe. I am too lazy to research all the changes they made in the EU for that matter)

In the US I first was covered under my husband's health insurance package he had through his employer (UN related entity). I was never sick, so I didn't even know how to use it and how well it would have covered what I would have needed. Same thing was true for my then husband and my son.

After separation and divorce, I lost that coverage, as did my son.

The German employers (working for them in the US) I had after being on my own, all didn't offer a health insurance package in the US. So, I paid into a private health insurance in Germany that covered internationally. They were good, covered my dentals here in the US to 80 percent. But they were very expensive in premiums.

When finally my German employer offered its employees, locally hired into their US based offices, there was the option for me to be covered by that new US package. But it didn't cover enough for real things, when you need it. Luckily I was never sick. If I had been sick with cancer, like my niece, who died here in the US of it, it would have wiped me out financially. My niece was lucky to be a tenured professor in the US, which offered a very good health insurance for. Nevertheless, my sister, her mother in Germany, always kept her German public health insurance alive and paid for it, just in case... So much trust we have in the Americans, heh ...

So, I kept my German private health insurance in a "non-active, sleeping mode" that still costs me monthly premiums, but lower ones. It gave me the option and right, when I would return to Germany, to re-activate that insurance without conditions (like age and pre-extisting conditions would not considered). It was so to speak a guarantee that I still could have in Germany private health insurance coverage, when I came back to re-settle there.

My son meanwhile had never any job or employer in the US, who offered health insurance, because they were so kind to never give him enough hours to be eligible, a trick they just perfected to an art. The only time when my son was covered in the US, was when he enlisted in the USAF.

My son's girf friend has no insurance on her own, because all she can find (with bacherlor degree and that girl is a tough, hard-working cookie) are part-time jobs (and she has her student loan to pay back as well). That's why she ended up working on a cruise ship, like my son, roof over their heads (bunk bed cabin shared with four people), food and health insurace were given. But most of the cruise ship hospitality workers can't make that more than two years. It's hard, hard work, very low pay and with quite inhumane work schedules.

So I kept paying the German private insurance for him, which covered him internationally, on and off, dependent if he had some coverage by an US health insurer or not. A hassle. I cancelled it when he was in the USAF and when he left the military, he had coverage through the VA. He had, dependent on the jobs he had, additional isurance through his US employers, but that changed constantly, because employers don't give you full-time hours consistantly.

Ok, now meanwhile I started to get older and the question was, if I may return to Germany for my old age. I learned that after 35 years being in the US, I would not have a right anymore to get back into the German public health insurance, which I could afford as a "poor" retiree. So, I would have to prove that I was in Germany insured privately and re-activate that German private insurance. Which I could, just the premiums are higher than my little retiree money (US SS and a little something from Germany).

So now I have this lovely situation that, if I were to go back to Germany, to have to pay more for my private German health insurance than I have retirement income so far, and can't use the US Medicare in Germany. Then I have to go begging to the German public health insurers and prove to them that I am dirt poor. I am not sure though, if I am dirt poor enough. I pray that I am poor enough now.

Well, ain't that funny?

One other thing people forget when moving overseas and working there and then come back to where they came from, is that you accumulate SS money in the US not long enough to have a large enough SS monthly income, and you accumulate something similar in the country you moved into that is similar to your SS, but also, because of lack of time lenght you might work overseas, is way too little. And you forget that with two retirement payments, one in US $ and one in Euro, you end up not knowing how much you have each month, if the currency exchange rates fluctuate. Which, if your overall retirement money is low, can lead to some headaches.

And if you were lucky enough to be able to save money into some annuities that currency exchange rate is also something that makes you jittery.

Of course for my son, he doesn't have the money power to even get into something like that, and if an employer offers a 401K, but then you many have it only for half a year, because you lose your full-time rights etc. it just turns out to be ridiculous. I saved my money in order to help my son have any sort of annuity for his retirement. Which I think is a ridiculous thing to have to do. Suzie Orman admitted lately that all the smart advice she used to give to younger folks that used to work, doen't work anymore. So, what is then supposed to work for the little people?

Reading about Americans retiring overseas or being able to hip-hop from overseas back to the US, makes me believe they might be "filthy somewhat rich" and rather oldish matured and wise.

Younger folks work for a while overseas or study overseas but then, I guess, there are mamas and papas or grandpas and grandmas with a little money put aside for their kiddos. They make sure they can fall back on if they need to come back to the US. Or otherwise they never come back to the US.

Meanwhile a couple of "poor little people" go bankcrupt and homeless, while
thousands of square feet commercial real estate is empty, but their door entrances are occupied by homeless people, who make their home under the roofs of the little entrance nooks to be protected against rain.

I mean, can't help to rub it into you, I doubt that in good 'ol Russia, people freeze to death, when they are homeless. But they do here in the US. They are poor everywhere, the US or Russia. Question is how do you take care of your poor and old folks.

Meanwhile we have "the new poor", the refugees, seeking entrance into "rich" Germany in the hundreds of thousands. They might have been poor, before they fled from their home countries, but not helpless. The had roofs over their heads in some form, food to cook and smartness to learn and help themselves.

Thanks to our frigging politicians, who are too stupid to understand the unintended consequences of their "wars of and against terror" and their desires to dig out of mama earth whatever they need and fill their bank accounts.

Nuts all around. Occupy the politicians and their corporate lobbyist bribers.