Agreed. The EU is where countries go after empire, and is a solution to that problem (along with all of the lost wars and preventing more lost wars). It also deals with the populism problem far better than America, for example.
The UK is going to become a Russian and American playground when Brexit occurs. It will be a paradise for oligarchs to play the populace even more. Oligarchs thrive from the chaos of these sorts of situations and especially financially.
I understand why Americans want to come to the UK. A lot of them come for the sole purpose of having access to better and guaranteed healthcare (you can have good insurance and still owe tens of thousands to millions if you have either cancer or a rare disease and both are statistically common—-also the third leading cause of death is believed to be medical errors according to Johns Hopkins and others—-you can go to the best institutions and still very easily die unnecessarily in the US as that kind of statistic cannot be evaded), but the lifespan of the UK population is going to lag hardcore compared to other countries on the European continent, especially ones in or aligned with the EU.
Getting UK citizenship can be hard too. They are not immigration friendly at all, unless you were an EU citizen (at least in the past). There are some really esoteric rules, and there are people who have been denied citizenship for having a misdemeanor moving traffic violation, with no arrest or criminal record, who paid the fine on time.
If you really want to have access to the UK, become a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU. By being an EU citizen, you can live/work/retire in over 30 European countries, including all of the EU countries. It is far easier to become an Irish citizen too. They are also very pro-EU. Not only that, citizens of the Republic of Ireland have rights to live/work/retire in the UK due to a common agreement.
There is very little medical tourism from the US to the UK. In fact patients tend to go the other way. The US has higher 5 year survival rates for most types of cancer.
Americans frequently emigrate to the UK to eventually have guaranteed lifelong access to healthcare.
Tourism is a totally different matter. You go to the “eastern” EU countries in that case.
As for the cancer patient survival, in the US, 42% of patients lose their life savings within 2 years and the amount was typically around $92,000. That alone screws American cancer patients over long term, and it can cause them to die.
You can cherry pick data, but your logic does not add up.
Spend some time on HealthData.org examining the US versus other developed countries.
We may have better cancer survival rates, but when you look at deaths attributed to amenable and non-amenable medical errors (believed to be the US #3 leading cause of death by multiple studies), the average American life expectancy, and anticipated life expectancies in the future (in addition to disability free years of life), it is 100% clear that we fail as a system.
A lot of these patients probably had missed or late cancer diagnoses too, due to the lack of preventative care and also just the lack of public health regulations in the US.
Pretty much every developed country has a better healthcare system than the US.
We do not have a normal system, and many like to think of it as normal, but it is far from that.
You can cherry pick data all day, but you are not seeing the big picture here, and you do not realize how easy it is to become a statistic.
I nearly died from medical errors in the US healthcare system myself, and from sepsis at age 23.
I am a dual US|EU citizen (culturally American) living in the EU, and I never plan on working in the US or living there long term.
> As for the cancer patient survival, in the US, 42% of patients lose their life savings within 2 years and the amount was typically around $92,000. That alone screws American cancer patients over long term, and it can cause them to die.
If you have insurance, and 80-90%+ of Americans do (and probably more among cancer patients, as they are usually older so they often qualify for Medicare), it’s extremely rare to spend $92k in 2 year. Even in the plans with the highest out of pocket maximums, these are almost never more than $10k/year. That might drain people savings anyway, but a lot of people have very little savings.
I really don’t know where your data is from, but it doesn’t match the reality lived by most Americans. The US healthcare system has a lot of problems, so many that you don’t really need to make ones up.
The UK is hard to emigrate to. There are better options than the UK, especially now that they left the EU. But, the Americans who go to the UK and eventually do become UK citizens often do over healthcare.
While being an American expat is not as common due to worldwide liability on taxes, many of those who emigrate to developed countries and eventually become citizens do so for guaranteed access to healthcare and other benefits of a social welfare state that the US does not have.
The problem with Canada/Australia/New Zealand, where many Americans go, as we are more culturally aligned with them compared to other developed countries, is that they have medical inadmissability clauses in their immigration laws. You generally have to be pretty healthy to get a even get an approved work visa there, and stay relatively healthy to become a citizen. So, you really cannot effectively emigrate for healthcare to these countries. This is why you do not hear about Americans emigrating over healthcare as much.
Source for your contention that “Americans frequently emigrate to the UK?”
Do you have any comparison for what cancer does to the finances of people in the UK? Because there is more to it than the cost of medical care. The cost of medical care is a lot less than that in the US: https://healthpayerintelligence.com/news/cancer-patients-pai...
“In a case study, a patient with lymphoma paid out-of-pocket healthcare costs from $6,446 in a large employer-sponsored health plan to $12,931 in a health plan on the individual health insurance market. These were all Affordable Care Act (ACA)-compliant plans.”
Note that your survey covers 2000-2012, mostly before the ACA went into effect.
The resource above says Americans spent $5.6 billion on out of pocket cancer care annually. There’s 2 million cancer cases annually, so you’re talking about $2,500 in out of pocket costs on average.
While it cannot definitively be proven why somebody moves to X country and becomes a citizen, obviously it is for the benefits. In Europe, STEM workers typically get paid less, and often one needs an advanced degree (unless an internal company transfer occurs) due to the Bologna Process, which is a pan-European degree (education requirements) recognition agreement that applies to Americans too. So, one becomes a citizen for the values and the benefits.
It is clear that the article that you linked is talking about cost liability under contract, especially since it is coming from a "health payer organization". This includes the mentions of surprise billing, which are often classified as out-of-network, but under contract. Likewise, out-of-pocket costs in the article are being mentioned with respect to people insured and what was covered under contract.
You can get screwed financially as a cancer patient on Medicare. I personally have 2 rare immune mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system. One of them is very rare and I cannot go on a Medicare Advantage plan, as it would be an HMO with severe network restrictions. Once you go on a Medicare advantage plan, you effectively cannot go back to traditional Medicare (and also cannot get a Part B Medigap plan, because medical underwriting is allowed, even post ACA).
The problem is that traditional Medicare does not have out of pocket limits, and you can be subject to several tens of thousands of dollars in liability for prescription drugs once you hit the Medicare Part D prescription catastrophic coverage level, especially if you require an orphan drug.
For me, I require subcutaneous immunoglobulin and it is the only medication that has ever worked for me or put me in remission and I have tried about 10 different medications, plus combinations of them. It is literally my only option. Even intravenous immunoglobulin in the hospital (Medicare Part B), when optimized, was ineffective and never put me in remission.
I have Medicare due to disability and I am working now (I can keep Medicare for life technically if I pay the premiums every month). But, if I was living in the US, my yearly medical costs would be around $40,000-60,000/year on Medicare.
There are articles about this on the Kaiser Family Foundation website on Medicare Catastrophic Coverage liability. It happens to a lot of cancer patients and also people with rare diseases.
This is one of the reasons why I don’t live in the US, and the primary reason why I don’t live in the US is because of healthcare. Being able to work (with better protections--critical for me) and not having to worry about healthcare is worth living in Europe.
That's not obvious at all and you're just making things up. Most Americans who emigrate to the EU do so for family reasons like marriage, or because they got a better job offer. Very few do so for benefits. Serious medical conditions like yours are rare.
No they are not. Collectively, 7% of the general population has some sort of a rare disease, which can benefit from orphan drugs, which typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and in some cases--millions per year. No, I am not making this up.
The UK is going to become a Russian and American playground when Brexit occurs. It will be a paradise for oligarchs to play the populace even more. Oligarchs thrive from the chaos of these sorts of situations and especially financially.
I understand why Americans want to come to the UK. A lot of them come for the sole purpose of having access to better and guaranteed healthcare (you can have good insurance and still owe tens of thousands to millions if you have either cancer or a rare disease and both are statistically common—-also the third leading cause of death is believed to be medical errors according to Johns Hopkins and others—-you can go to the best institutions and still very easily die unnecessarily in the US as that kind of statistic cannot be evaded), but the lifespan of the UK population is going to lag hardcore compared to other countries on the European continent, especially ones in or aligned with the EU.
Getting UK citizenship can be hard too. They are not immigration friendly at all, unless you were an EU citizen (at least in the past). There are some really esoteric rules, and there are people who have been denied citizenship for having a misdemeanor moving traffic violation, with no arrest or criminal record, who paid the fine on time.
If you really want to have access to the UK, become a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU. By being an EU citizen, you can live/work/retire in over 30 European countries, including all of the EU countries. It is far easier to become an Irish citizen too. They are also very pro-EU. Not only that, citizens of the Republic of Ireland have rights to live/work/retire in the UK due to a common agreement.