@thanatokephaloides one of the years we had to actually use our health insurance, 2002 I believe.

This was with supposedly good health insurance.

Premiums for two: up to $1500 per month.

Out of pocket, in network deductible and 20% of a procedure once the deductible was met: $15,000.

We paid $25,000 out of our own pocket to achieve any insurance support.

This did not include doctors out of network or not taking insurance at all.

Expats are excluded from taking Medicare out of the US. The only country in the world that doesn't allow portable health insurance. Heck a German citizen taking care of mom in the US is supported by German health insurance. And if needed there is a German hospital in Florida.

One of the benefits of France is that after three months in country (with proof of international health insurance, reasonable premiums) declaring permanent residency, entitles the resident to complete access and a Carte Vitale plus top up insurance. Everything is handled electronically. We never see a bill. We didn't switch until the third year, but it is worth it.

Did the US offer us our worklife investment back? Nope. Did we get any acknowledgement we had contributed to the Medicare system? Nope. What that bit of lifelong savings could do to improve our comfort here, would be amazing.

We talked with the rep of AARO (Association of Americans Residing Overseas - 9 million) and before we could verbalize how we were being treated by the US, she said, "you are a traitor for living outside of the US. Right?" Yup. We had more trouble extracting than embedding here in France.

For those of us outside the "too much money" income classes, this would be a net savings from the ripoff that private health insurance has been all these years......

@AverageJoe42

I just watched her on Rising and she said all the things I have heard people saying before on why they want to go to congress. Sure she and AOC and the squid talk a big game, but I have heard that since I started paying attention. After Obama I don't believe a darn word they say if they are running as a democrat. Nope. Next.

It's all over for effective opposition.

You can't changed a rigged system while playing by its rules.

@Cassiodorus

hesitated in signing it was that he said it was too full of needless pork. '$2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package'.

he should have balked, but nobody who objected will seriously want to know what's in 'the piece of garbage he signed yesterday, will they?

et tu, krystal ball?

@krystalball 16h

Trump signs the bill making clear that his entire “strategy” was to generate maximum chaos with zero actual improvement in outcome. Disgusting to toy with people’s lives like this.

campaign on the idea that they were going to give us anything?

I can't say I caught a lot of it. There were two big noise machines dominating the media (while the rest of us were staying at home) in 2020: 1) Trump, and 2) "Omigod Trump's a DICTATOR! He's a FASCIST!" Nobody seems to have noticed how ineffectual and lazy Trump really was. The rest of it I don't know. I covered some local Oregon elections here at c99%; most of the important action was done by May, and the good guys usually lost.

Meanwhile the two signature pieces of legislation for this year were 1) the CARES Act and 2) the piece of garbage Trump signed yesterday. Oh and we had an election in which Congress was practically unchanged in its makeup (pending, perhaps, the special election coming up in Georgia).

So for the next four years we can expect to hear an occasional complaint that gee everyone's starving and homeless and you can't see a doctor not merely because you can't afford it but also because the doctors are all busy. And the Biden administration will, through the personage of Bruce Reed if through nobody else, tell everyone: you have nowhere else to go. And everyone will promptly shut up and go back to their lunches of cold despair.

Still no People's Party?