Travelling to the US without medical insurance...

[gavroche]

Not sure you're a 'nobber' (although I'm sure you've been called worse ) but how can you not like the USA if you've never been there? If it doesn't appeal to you, well, fine, but to totally dismiss it is a bit, er, narrow-minded, non?

But each to their own...

The country itself is beautiful, the people friendly but I don't like their culture , based on greed and violence.

 

[MarkF]

The country itself is beautiful, the people friendly but I don't like their culture , based on greed and violence.

Cycling coast to coast in the USA is still a dream of mine, however, I've criss crossed the states in driveaway cars (delivering) and although the average middle American can be insular (understandable) I've never met such friendly, open, hospitable and generous people anywhere else.

 

[screenman]

The country itself is beautiful, the people friendly but I don't like their culture , based on greed and violence.

Have you been there?

 

[mjr]

Cycling coast to coast in the USA is still a dream of mine, however, I've criss crossed the states in driveaway cars (delivering) and although the average middle American can be insular (understandable) I've never met such friendly, open, hospitable and generous people anywhere else.

Really? You need to visit some other places! Most Americans are OK but so are most people everywhere. The USA stands out as the country where I've had the most people try to scam me, but maybe that's my fault for visiting NY and DC.

 

[swee'pea99]

I'm picking on one example, but all of you saying that travel insurance is cheap have probably never tried to get medical insurance for someone with a chronic-but-harmless illness - that is, one which I'm told if treated has no effect on life expectency because the treatment basically reduces the risk of being killed by the illness sufficiently that the beneficial side-effects of the treatment outweigh the residual risk. In other words: the main difference between them and a member of the general population is simply the diagnosis... and a fraction of the general population will have the same illness, undiagnosed, with the elevated risk... plus the diagnosed people are routinely checked for a range of other conditions like diabetes, so insurers will usually know if they've got that.

But simply by being diagnosed and treated, the insurance gets loaded - I'm paying about 5 times as much as if I didn't have a chronic illness. Unless the medics are blowing smoke up my arse about the benefits of treatment, I think this is a market effect rather than actuarial adjustment. I have to buy from a smaller market of insurers who seem fairly close on price and even those won't give a representative price until you go through screening - despite a range of starting prices, the wildly different loadings seem to put most within £30 of each other, usually within £5. Some of the large providers are known for flat-out declining certain conditions so you can't ask them else you have to answer the "have you ever been refused insurance?" type question with "Yes" and that shrinks your potential market even further. It seems like a market for lemons.

And that small market is before you start excluding insurers with onerous restrictions on physical activities like cycling.

All this takes farking hours and often phone calls, too. And that's if you know it's coming and keep your own medical notes (I do... I've been ill a long time). Some of the medical specialist insurers even ask if you've had a common cold in the last year!

I still wouldn't travel without insurance but I can understand why people take the risk.

Bottom line is the moment you're anything but 100% 'standard', you enter a whole nother ball game. Our home insurance has been £150 +/- for years. This year my wife got a hobby kiln. It's totally safe, 13amp, less risky than a bar fire (the elements are behind 3" of insulation), but it tripled the cost of our insurance at a stroke. Basically most insurers simply didn't want to insure us, so the whole competitive quote business was out the window. No-one's ever asked about the open fire we have in the living room, which is way more risky (it doesn't have 3" of insulation, and can spit live sparks out onto the carpet). Lots of people have those...

 

[MarkF]

Really? You need to visit some other places! Most Americans are OK but so are most people everywhere. The USA stands out as the country where I've had most people try to scam me, but maybe that's my fault for visiting NY and DC.

I've visited many other places, that's how I formed my opinion. I've only been scammed once, that was in Valencia, still my favourite city and country though.............and I did say "middle American".

 

[Glenn]

I visited a Florida hospital with severe food poisoning while still in the RAF, the docs wanted to see my passport before treating me. I gave him my NATO travel order but they didn't accept that, ending up calling the detachment commander to sort out payment.

 

[MontyVeda]

The country itself is beautiful, the people friendly but I don't like their culture , based on greed and violence.

Have you been there?

[QUOTE 4742967, member: 259"]What nonsense.[/QUOTE]

I agree with Mort and believe the statement in Gavroche's post displays a certain level of ignorance regarding American culture.

I would suggest that Gavroche is ignorant of American culture, but a Mod might delete this post, so I'll just stick to saying his comment is ignorant.... did i jump through the hoop properly this time?

 

[velovoice]

I dimly remember reading that a third of all personal bankruptcies in the US were due to medical bills.

I don't know what the official statistics say -- with all the possible fluctuations due to region, etc -- but the proportion is rather higher than 1/3 in my immediate family. In fact, I think it's possibly something like 6 of the 8 of us. All of us gainfully employed, not on benefits, etc.

@glasgowcyclist's assessment is spot on.

 

[gavroche]

Ignorance indeed:

- The Americans caused one of the biggest genocide by trying to exterminate the red Indians.
- America is the only country in the world that used atomic weapons twice, killing thousands of people in a flash.
- America is the biggest waster of energy and resources.
- American fast food could be responsible for the level of obesity in the Western world.
- The gun culture in America is so powerful that even mass killings in schools is not enough to weaken it.
- The American army occupied my country until the mid sixties after ww2 until General De Gaulle told them to go home.
_ The North Vietnam has been bombarded endlessly with chemical weapons for years in the late 60s and early 70s.
- Many American films are based on using guns, violence and explosions.
Ignorance?

 

[screenman]

Ignorance indeed:

- The Americans caused one of the biggest genocide by trying to exterminate the red Indians.
- America is the only country in the world that used atomic weapons twice, killing thousands of people in a flash.
- America is the biggest waster of energy and resources.
- American fast food could be responsible for the level of obesity in the Western world.
- The gun culture in America is so powerful that even mass killings in schools is not enough to weaken it.
- The American army occupied my country until the mid seventies after ww2 until General De Gaule told them to go home.
_ The North Vietnam has been bombarded endlessly with chemical weapons for years in the late 60s and early 70s.
- Many American films are based on using guns, violence and explosions.
Ignorance?

Yeh! but what about 1066.

 

[MontyVeda]

Ignorance indeed:

- The Americans caused one of the biggest genocide by trying to exterminate the red Indians.
- America is the only country in the world that used atomic weapons twice, killing thousands of people in a flash.
- America is the biggest waster of energy and resources.
- American fast food could be responsible for the level of obesity in the Western world.
- The gun culture in America is so powerful that even mass killings in schools is not enough to weaken it.
- The American army occupied my country until the mid sixties after ww2 until General De Gaulle told them to go home.
_ The North Vietnam has been bombarded endlessly with chemical weapons for years in the late 60s and early 70s.
- Many American films are based on using guns, violence and explosions.
Ignorance?

Selective memory?

Need one remind you that those 'americans' that were wiping out the Native Americans* were actually European?

Weren't the French fighting in Vietnam for many years before the Amercan's entered that war?

Luc Beson had made some great films... many with lots of guns, violence and explosions.

French fries.

etc.

*nobody calls them 'red indians' these days... unless they're stuck in the 50s.

 

[srw]

Yes there are some shitty Americans, and some shitty things about their country - their inability to stop a dangerous loon getting elected president, their love of guns and their attitude to the sick and poor to name but three. But I could say the same about most countries.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

Sad story I heard which happened about 15 years ago. Young Kiwi backpacker (no insurance) had a nasty accident/fall at the Grand Canyon. She was hospitalised and the resulting bill resulted in her dad's sheep farm in NZ going bankrupt. Bet there's an elephant in the room come Christmas meal time.

I was also pretty anti-America. Couldn't see the attraction until I went there. People genuinely mean it when they say 'Have a good day!' and customer service is second to none. Food portions are silly. I had to order starters or what they call 'ladies portions'. I canoed some of their rivers which was great. The NH Museum in NY was amazing.

And I got detained in Miami, but that's another story.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

And I got detained in Miami, but that's another story.

Vice?