General Discussion

My employer has us enrolled with Blue Cross, but I have found it pretty much useless, as they deny all claims I submit as being "out of network," which DUH Europe obviously is. When I moved here, I looked into getting German health insurance and was quoted $35,000 a year in premiums by the Germans--for just myself. I had pre-existing (heart) conditions. Since my employer is in the USA, I enjoy zero of the advantages that people with German employers enjoy, PLUS I have to pay both US and German taxes (comes out to, in my case, about a 73% income tax rate).

My wife is a German citizen, so except for the five years when she had no health insurance at all, she was covered here. For the time she was not covered, I bought her the rough equivalent of COBRA, which was about €550 ($650) per month. That was fortunate, as her second round of cancer happened during that time, and it didn't cost me anything more than the insurance premium. I paid out $39,000 over five years for her, and she got the best oncologist in Germany for her (rare) kind of cancer. It is almost always fatal. The diagnosis alone usually means "get your affairs in order without delay." She was that one in ten thousand who survived it due to an accidental early detection. The Operation, post op follow-up and month at a cancer patient rehab spa were all covered. In Germany, rehab spas exist for all kinds of cancer, and a month's stay there is covered by insurance as an integral last part of cancer treatment. Without the Cobra-equivalent, she was not covered at all from age 60 (when she became unemployed) to age 65 (German version of Medicare kicked in).