The second ER visit, this time to a hospital with an even better reputation, had us waiting over 14 hours before mom was admitted. The experience there was not as bad as the first one, but nevertheless pretty exhausting. Chairs were hard to find in the ER, but no one yelled at me when I found one to sit on. The third experience, to the same ER, found us waiting around 8 hours before admitting. However, the reason for the fast admission was that my mother was taken to a section of the ER that was cordoned off for possible cardiac patients. There were only two or three patients in that part of the ER with a couple of doctors and a couple of nurses to care for those few patients. I never got copies of the bills for those hospitalizations so I can’t tell what that cost the insurance company/Medicare. I don’t ever want to go back to an ER here again especially as our state legislature is continuing to threaten to cut the ER and nursing home budgets. Are they kidding?

I, a person who was self-employed for 20 years and paid for my own health insurance, now find myself unable to afford the high premiums while continuing to live in NYC. My premium was last raised to around a thousand a month, something that would be challenging for us along with the rising co-pays for my mother’s health care, etc., etc. While I was in Panama for a couple of months in 2006 I met people who told me their premiums had risen to over $3,000 a month due to pre-existing conditions. Numerous people I met in Panama or have been in touch with in other countries have commented the high cost of health care and insurance premiums forced them to leave the US.

I don’t really know what the medical care is like for the residents of every country I’ve thought of moving to, but I do know that I need to have health care and can’t find it here in my home country. I wonder if it’s possible that us moving to countries like Thailand and Ecuador and taking our dollars there will improve the economic situation for the people of those countries? Is it possible that our dollars will employ some of those people and allow them access to a better life? Am I being naive in believing that’s possible?

Well, a dowser can tell the difference between gold versus gold-plated tungsten, for $100, or 15 minutes of their time. That’s the same guy that can walk your property in Panama, and tell you whether the underground water is good or bad, and how much is there, and flowing at what rate, and in what direction, and how deep, and whether it is loaded up with lime or not, which all shows up in the shape of the measurable field, which is the same field whose wavelengths distinguish water from pottery, gold, silver, stone, bone, or anything. But without a very open mind, one might not stop and think to ask for such a person’s help. But such distrust is only a modern anomaly in the broad span of history.

Extra days in Pattaya are always nice except in your particular circumstances. I am in Batam at the moment, but should be in Singapore Monday. If you are hale and hearty and in town drop me an email.
Cheers!

http://nestmannblog.sovereignsociety.com/

I think DC is the city that never sleeps…

In the US,although changing, folks may still be treated in a true emergency, even if they do not have insurance or ability to pay. Heck, we have even experienced, during lean graduate student times, having a surgery (follow up for cleft lip palate issues as an adult) expense written off by the hospital as charity, in a small colorado city. We applied for this option, and they gave it to us, much needed and appreciated by us. The hospital writes it off as a tax deduction, and we get care…like the old days, when charitie groups ran hosptials and it was truly for care of the sick, not a profit making venture, and common sense applied.

That said, in the US, of course we now have a particular immigrant group who uses ER for routine care, b/c they know they won’t be turned away. This flies in the face of the puritanical/Judeo-Christian history of the US, where citizens knew when and how to utilize services for the great good.

In any case, it is easy to romanticize/glamourize healthcare in 3rd world countries, or second world-such as brasil, colombia, thailand,etc. but the truth is that most of their own citizens do not receive acess to such care, and folks like Simon and many other foreigners avail themselves solely b/c they have the power of the dollar behind them. This is of course a fantastic opportunity, and nice to be treated like a human in their system again, but let’s not loose perspective on what got you ‘in the door’…Why,it’s your US dollar and white skin advantage, primarily. No need to bite the hand that has indeed fed you, even if you know longer wish to partake in said buffet.