ivinsfan - My point was that I was promised in writing free healthcare for life and the US government reneged on it. I would use the Tricare Overseas but it is essentially useless. There are over 500,000 military retirees living as expats (that alone should tell you something) and all of us get this extremely sucky medical coverage when we leave the US. It is a disservice to us to deliberately make the service provided useless. It is much worse for retirees living in places like the Philippines where every visit has to be to a designated physician or service because of the massive fraud there. Same for Mexico etc.
This is all with a military budget (if you include blacks ops) higher than $1 trillion a year but not enough to provide promised healthcare to retirees who served their lives for this country fighting the never-ending wars. The same for the Veterans who didn't retire but have service incurred disabilities. So, yes the citizens must pay for this but in fact don't pay as they should. We give better coverage to illegal immigrants than veterans and also paid by the citizens. However, historically all militaries are treated like this throughout the ages so it is not new. The US is no different than anyone else with the exception of being the only modern country without a national health service and that will not change because of the way politics is run in the US.
What boggles my mind are the numbers provided here by others for medical coverage. Jeeez! Over $10k a year for a married couple and this is the cheapest medical coverage in the US just blows my mind. It seems to me Americans have been slow boiled to accept these costs as normal. The main reason I bagged using Tricare other than it being so awful, is it is too expensive relative to actual costs. We have had major medical problems and none ever exceeded $1,000 and our totals for a year including expensive prescrition medications for my wife's heart condition, never exceed $3k a year.
As an example, I just recovered from a calamitous bicycle accident where I crashed into a fence (my fault as my brakes failed I had to choose between a truck or the fence), broke a wrist, collar bone, 3 fingers and crushed my right leg causing massive hematomas. I went by ambulance to the local medical center, got tested for COVID, a series of x-rays, tetanus shot, treated and released all within 2 hours. The total cost was roughly $150. This is typical for us and we never have exceeded our costs for Part B and not even close to the TRICARE costs and deductibles. I will probably get Hungarian citizenship next year and can then purchase the National Health coverage for the $25 a month and has zero co-pays or deductibles. Our medications as non-citizens is higher than what Hungarians pay for the same medications but even so, it is 90% (or more) less than what you pay in the US.
I will add also that things you take for granted which are cost reduction (profit increases) that don't exist outside the US like using nurses and PA's in lieu of physicians. PA's don't exist outside the US at all. Here nurses do nursing for inpatient care and nothing else. Everything here is done by a doctor. All medical specialists have a PhD in their field and also do clinical research and are bonafide experts in their fields. It is very interesting. For example, you get an x-ray, CT scan, MRI, etc. a radiologist takes it and reads it on the spot. No waiting for someone to read it sometimes weeks later. My mother when she lived here with us (she died last year at 95) had chronic urinary tract infections all her life. I took her to the medical center here (no appointment as it is first come - first served) and she saw the Urologist on duty a woman physician of about 65 years of age (who spoke Russian as a second language as she was trained in Moscow). I speak a small amount of Russian as my wife is Russian and very poor Hungarian so we got by. The wait was maybe 45 minutes or so. The woman doctor examined her and did an abdominal ultrasound on the spot, then performed a suprapubic tap to get clean sterile urine, did the lab tests herself on the spot, then treated her. I was in the room the entire time. My mother was freaked out about the whole thing as it was fast and no-nonsense and I had barely enough time to explain what was going on. Something very unusual compared to American medical practices. The whole visit took maybe 20 minutes. Her prescription was a specific set of herbal teas we got filled at our local farmer's market that has an herbologist store in it. My mother was cured after that as long as she had this tea every day. The cost for the visit was under $20. The teas were maybe $10 a month. This is typical. This was a woman that was always on more or less permanently constant doses of antibiotics most of her adult life and something as simple as an herbal tea fixed her problems. I had a similar experience for gastric reflux disease and my treatment was special Hungarian natural alkaline mineral water that you can buy at any grocery store here for about $0.50 a bottle. You get heartburn then drink a small swig of the water and it is gone immediately. I was drinking maybe a bottle a week. It completely fixes the problem and has zero side effects, unlike American pharmaceuticals. My problem is now completely cured after going to a ketogenic diet. In Europe, they still practice natural health care and are very shy of prescribing anything pharmaceutical unless absolutely necessary. If you get injured or have surgery you won't get pain killers any stronger than Ibuprofin here and even then in small amounts. Europeans, especially eastern European ones, know how to suck it up and take it.
