StatusNomadicus
Well-known member
with a free market, this might be different very soon...at least we can hope!
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Medical Healthcare medical monthly premiums are going to get increased!
StatusNomadicus
Well-known member
super useful, thanks mang, and all this talk about rate changes (let's hope some new companies come here, swoop-in and compete like mad for the Expat health-insurance market, and offer way-cheap rates!) reminded me of the funny meme i saw on twitter:
bahahahhaa
For over a decade now, I've chosen not to pay a single penny towards what's labeled as "medical/health insurance." Nine years ago, I decided to opt out of Medicare Part B, which is slated to cost $185 USD per month come 2024. Let me tell you, I've firmly decided that I won't be returning to the USA for any reason, health care included. (No, I'm not on the run or wanted by the FBI).
You see, where I'm currently residing, public health care is not only accessible but even more so than when I had Medicus coverage. I take care of the routine exams – the lab tests, hearing check, and EKG needed for my driving permit renewal – all out of pocket. Thanks to the wonders of WhatsApp, I can easily schedule appointments, and the wait time is a mere 10-15 minutes or less. Plus, the costs are pleasantly low – less than $30 USD for lab tests, under $15 USD for the electrocardiogram, and about $10 USD for the hearing test.
As for my concerns about cancer, those have dwindled considerably. I learned that cutting out sugar – from cookies, bread, candy, crackers, pasta, rice, and even fruit – deprives cancer cells of their fuel. It's been a good 5 years since I embraced this change while still in my late 50's. And would you believe it? Alcohol hasn't touched my lips in 9 years.
On a personal note, I bid farewell to looking like I was going to have a baby and having bigger breasts than my girlfriend, maintaining a healthy BMI of 20.
My secret? A diet and lifestyle that has become my ultimate health insurance. I will occasionally eat some fruits every now and again but that's because I have a grove of trees on my property.
Take it from me, my friend, investing in your well-being pays the best dividends.
You see, where I'm currently residing, public health care is not only accessible but even more so than when I had Medicus coverage. I take care of the routine exams – the lab tests, hearing check, and EKG needed for my driving permit renewal – all out of pocket. Thanks to the wonders of WhatsApp, I can easily schedule appointments, and the wait time is a mere 10-15 minutes or less. Plus, the costs are pleasantly low – less than $30 USD for lab tests, under $15 USD for the electrocardiogram, and about $10 USD for the hearing test.
As for my concerns about cancer, those have dwindled considerably. I learned that cutting out sugar – from cookies, bread, candy, crackers, pasta, rice, and even fruit – deprives cancer cells of their fuel. It's been a good 5 years since I embraced this change while still in my late 50's. And would you believe it? Alcohol hasn't touched my lips in 9 years.
On a personal note, I bid farewell to looking like I was going to have a baby and having bigger breasts than my girlfriend, maintaining a healthy BMI of 20.
My secret? A diet and lifestyle that has become my ultimate health insurance. I will occasionally eat some fruits every now and again but that's because I have a grove of trees on my property.
Take it from me, my friend, investing in your well-being pays the best dividends.
RN in BA
Well-known member
Big applause for the lifestyle adjustments you've made!! Trust me, as a nurse this is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your body.
They've truly wielded a significant influence on your overall health and well-being! It's heartening to witness individuals like you taking charge of their health through mindful choices. Keep up the commendable work!
Old Geezer
Member
A word to the wise for older senior citizens like me. If you're over 65 you might get coverage without a DNI but I sure haven't found it. I heard OSDE was the best plan and I have tried in vain to try to get a policy there. I have spent hours and hours on the phone and gotten hung up on many times.
They told me if I do get coverage I'd need to shell out $600 to $800 USD per month or possibly more. I have been to Argentina many times and I thought I knew what I was doing. Please if anyone has any experience that proves me wrong (which often happens as I tend to be wrong a lot of the time) please post about it. Help an old geezer out.
I think Milei is probably a good choice for systemic change down the road but it's going to be painful for many including expats that were used to an affordable cost of living. After seeing the changes with health care insurance across the board and all companies it
sounds like the subsidized days are over and prices on everything are going way up.
Expats coming down thinking it's going to be cheap need to be really careful. I read on the old forum about some really smart members warning that prices would go way up on rental apartments on Airbnb but I was not expecting them to be so correct. (Once again I was VERY WRONG).
Nice Airbnbs that I used to pay very cheap prices have all of a sudden skyrocketed and always full. I may have to go back to Venezuela or Costa Rica. It's getting to the point I can't afford Buenos Aires at the quality I was accustomed to.
They told me if I do get coverage I'd need to shell out $600 to $800 USD per month or possibly more. I have been to Argentina many times and I thought I knew what I was doing. Please if anyone has any experience that proves me wrong (which often happens as I tend to be wrong a lot of the time) please post about it. Help an old geezer out.
I think Milei is probably a good choice for systemic change down the road but it's going to be painful for many including expats that were used to an affordable cost of living. After seeing the changes with health care insurance across the board and all companies it
sounds like the subsidized days are over and prices on everything are going way up.
Expats coming down thinking it's going to be cheap need to be really careful. I read on the old forum about some really smart members warning that prices would go way up on rental apartments on Airbnb but I was not expecting them to be so correct. (Once again I was VERY WRONG).
Nice Airbnbs that I used to pay very cheap prices have all of a sudden skyrocketed and always full. I may have to go back to Venezuela or Costa Rica. It's getting to the point I can't afford Buenos Aires at the quality I was accustomed to.
StatusNomadicus
Well-known member
i love this forum because of people like you, @sophos! following you, new friend. the USA has some of the most GMO, pesticide/herbicide, crappy processed fake foods anywhere, which serves to keep us sedentary and obsessed with our screens so that we are constantly seeking 'help' from Big Government to solve the problems they tacitly or purposefully allowed to be created. Wall-E really was a great film and not just a kid's movie, and Idiocracy feels like a script for our civilization, every year i'm alive. that being said, i'm still a little white-pilled/optimistic because we have more comms with like-minded people, and more ability to learn how to live fulfilling lives outside of where we were born (thus, the Expat lifestyle), that people didn't have before the Internet, and people trapped in North Korea don't have right now.
if you haven't considered that almost all vaccines were mandated the past decades without much long-term data, and they keep us more sick alongside BigPharma's other goals of SickCare instead of Healthcare, you should watch Candace Owen's Shot in the Dark - highly recommended, despite me disagreeing with her about her theology and Trump-voting. she's a great investigator
i also have zero medical insurance for a couple years now, and pay cash for teeth cleaning and patient-ordered blood labs. more and more of this stuff is becoming decentralized with services like ZocDoc.com - and someone in my family is a physician and is considering doing a cash-only medical plan for a group of families that want one doctor without having all the added costs of insurance and billing and all that. it's a model already implemented in Thailand, where i saw public versus private hospitals, and i had many procedures done at the private one for very cheap, with NPs and PAs that were trained in world-class universities and offered a customer-service-oriented experience instead of the USA/UK/Canada model of garbage doctor offices and mediocre 'care'
Dr Burzynski in Texas offers cancer treatments for people who learn about the scams of radiation and chemo, since those kill people faster, painfully, without any research that it grants more survival. much like the Remdesivir use on intubated COVID patients in 2020-2022, we really are trusting 'experts' to do experiments on us, and those people are just spouting-out Pfizer propaganda. my family member said medical school has like 15 hours of nutrition/diet/exercise content in all of DO/MD school. terrifying. and they want us to think that being on 10 prescription meds by age 50 is normal, and it's okay to stop exercising in your 20s and just be sedentary all day and consume alcohol all the time.
it seems that 2020-2030 is going to be a reversion of back-to-basics simplicity like growing food, eating locally, shopping locally, networking with neighbors, and rejecting the New World Order/WEF style of one-world government. i think fighting politically at the local level is way important, and i hope TX or NH can secede from the USA to allow for an Argentina-style of decentralization back down to the lowest level feasible. all of this, combined with the perks of solar power and StarLink internet, and we can have the comforts of modern technology while not being reliant on a city electrical grid and hopefully less able to be censored when we have a divergent opinion. the hard part is going against the TV propaganda; it was really hard for years to avoid caving-in to social pressures trying to force everyone from 6 months to 99 years to get experimental mRNA 'vaccines.' then when i was a cop, people wanted Backyard Church-goers arrested for violating a governor's emergency order for meetings over 20 people...all in the name of 'something-something herd immunity'
i worry that fascism is on the rise, but not the kind that the commies claim MAGA folks are doing, but legitimate centralization and empowerment of a federal government like Canada, USA, an EU, where more and more aspects of life and the economy are completely dominated by what the State-run media tells us to do. i lost a lot of hope during the lockdowns when 70% of people seemed to be happy to do whatever their news channel said, so they wouldn't feel scared.
but, Sophos, which countries have you found to be the most advantageous for your style of living? i am more and more looking at places like Czech, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, which I would have never considered compared to the 'first-world' easy answers 15 years ago: canada, USA, australia, UK, ireland, EU/Holland/Belgium/etc.
StatusNomadicus
Well-known member
my current Airbnb host has openings for basic apartments in Palermo Chico, $700 USD cash or airbnb listed prices of 857, 874, 909, and 924 per month, but again all of these are negotiable and it's hot here Jan/Feb so you can probably get a deal
i can help you find a rental place @Old Geezer, no prob! i'd be happy to do some research. yes, some people here are paying $250/night for luxury penthouses, but i have spent less than 800/mo equivalent on my 3 Airbnbs so far my first month here (just takes a few minutes of sending messages and offering your price). as an airbnb Host, i can assure you i'd rather have you staying at my listing for 30 days at 700 bucks, than only having 2 week/ends booked at 300 bucks each. overall, it's less cleaning and flipping for me, and you get to trust a long-term Expat tenant more than just a vacationer who might be partying a lot. just my 2 cents. post your locations/needs and i'll get on it! i'm a dirty pagan, so you won't be bothering me on christmas/eve...in fact, it might be the most christ-like thing i could do, if it helps you not stress-out about stuff i do daily for a living
Thank you @StatusNomadicus for the nice words. I never got the COVID shot as I didn't know the long-term effects of it and I'm glad I didn't get it. Some of my friends have had mysterious health issues since. I can't say if it's related, however. I don't agree that all vaccines are bad for you. Many are well-documented that they are effective but I am not going to trust a vaccine that was fast-tracked. Vaccines like Polio and many others have proven to be effective and safe. I am not speaking about those.
I grow much of my own food. I'm a simple man and live out in the boonies. I don't watch TV news at all.
I don't travel around the world. I am American but lived in Argentina for the past 25 years. I don't care to know any other countries and don't travel. I can't speak to any other countries or how living there is. I'm a 25 year permanent resident of Argentina and love it here. I can't afford to travel at all and haven't been to the USA in over 15 years. I don't care to go back.
Spend Thrift
Well-known member
No offense kid but so I hope no offense is taken but that Airbnb looks like a dump. It looks like a $700, $857, $874, $909 or $924/month place. This flaming hot cheeto needs a nicer place. You're used to living in an RV from the sounds of your other posts. I have lived a life of luxury for 50+ years. I can't go backwards now. I only have a decade or so left.
my current Airbnb host has openings for basic apartments in Palermo Chico, $700 USD cash or airbnb listed prices of 857, 874, 909, and 924 per month, but again all of these are negotiable and it's hot here Jan/Feb so you can probably get a deal
i can help you find a rental place @Old Geezer, no prob! i'd be happy to do some research. yes, some people here are paying $250/night for luxury penthouses, but i have spent less than 800/mo equivalent on my 3 Airbnbs so far my first month here (just takes a few minutes of sending messages and offering your price). as an airbnb Host, i can assure you i'd rather have you staying at my listing for 30 days at 700 bucks, than only having 2 week/ends booked at 300 bucks each. overall, it's less cleaning and flipping for me, and you get to trust a long-term Expat tenant more than just a vacationer who might be partying a lot. just my 2 cents. post your locations/needs and i'll get on it! i'm a dirty pagan, so you won't be bothering me on christmas/eve...in fact, it might be the most christ-like thing i could do, if it helps you not stress-out about stuff i do daily for a living
Old Geezer
Member
Sorry but that place looks the size of a coffin! Nice area but that bed doesn't look like it has room for one person let alone 2. I'm too old to be slumming it this late in my life.
my current Airbnb host has openings for basic apartments in Palermo Chico, $700 USD cash or airbnb listed prices of 857, 874, 909, and 924 per month, but again all of these are negotiable and it's hot here Jan/Feb so you can probably get a deal
i can help you find a rental place @Old Geezer, no prob! i'd be happy to do some research. yes, some people here are paying $250/night for luxury penthouses, but i have spent less than 800/mo equivalent on my 3 Airbnbs so far my first month here (just takes a few minutes of sending messages and offering your price). as an airbnb Host, i can assure you i'd rather have you staying at my listing for 30 days at 700 bucks, than only having 2 week/ends booked at 300 bucks each. overall, it's less cleaning and flipping for me, and you get to trust a long-term Expat tenant more than just a vacationer who might be partying a lot. just my 2 cents. post your locations/needs and i'll get on it! i'm a dirty pagan, so you won't be bothering me on christmas/eve...in fact, it might be the most christ-like thing i could do, if it helps you not stress-out about stuff i do daily for a living
You have to think things through ahead of time if you are planning to live in Argentina in the future. You should plan a spreadsheet and detail how much you will spend here. Most of the blogs are wrong online that tell the cost of living here. Look at this crazy article that shows how cheap Argentina is:
35 Countries Where Your Social Security Check Goes Furthest
Your Social Security benefits last a lot longer in these places.
It is totally wrong and inaccurate. You should budget private healthcare insurance and also should be aware of rentals for the quality and style that you really want to live in. Some are posting cheap rentals that NO ONE would want to live in. It's human nature to not want to live in a place that is subpar from what you lived in the past but many times you MUST do that. You have to be able to downgrade. Some can't do that.
hope that some of you older expat newcomers will be able to just skip the private insurance route which I did. I know that isn't something many feel comfortable doing but if you can't afford it then you must think about doing that. I haven't had to pay rent for 20 years as I bought my humble home many decades ago and I don't have to pay rent or HOA expenses. My monthly expenses don't exceed $1,200 which is all I have from my social security payment.
Old Geezer
Member
You sound much wiser than many of us dumber expats who thought we could afford Argentina. You have things figured out and it sounds like you know this country. You will also smart enough to buy real estate when it was most likely much cheaper than it is now. Prices have fallen quite a bit but most of us don't have much money at all saved up. We may be SOL.You have to think things through ahead of time if you are planning to live in Argentina in the future. You should plan a spreadsheet and detail how much you will spend here. Most of the blogs are wrong online that tell the cost of living here. Look at this crazy article that shows how cheap Argentina is:
35 Countries Where Your Social Security Check Goes Furthest
Your Social Security benefits last a lot longer in these places.finance.yahoo.com
It is totally wrong and inaccurate. You should budget private healthcare insurance and also should be aware of rentals for the quality and style that you really want to live in. Some are posting cheap rentals that NO ONE would want to live in. It's human nature to not want to live in a place that is subpar from what you lived in the past but many times you MUST do that. You have to be able to downgrade. Some can't do that.
hope that some of you older expat newcomers will be able to just skip the private insurance route which I did. I know that isn't something many feel comfortable doing but if you can't afford it then you must think about doing that. I haven't had to pay rent for 20 years as I bought my humble home many decades ago and I don't have to pay rent or HOA expenses. My monthly expenses don't exceed $1,200 which is all I have from my social security payment.
Billy Goat
Well-known member
You mentioned that you came to Argentina over 25 years ago. I'm sure that things were much different back then. I don't know how expensive things were but 25 years ago it was the 1 to $ US dollar days so it must have been very expensive. You have probably seen it all since then. Property values are much higher now vs. then so I'm sure you bought much lower.You have to think things through ahead of time if you are planning to live in Argentina in the future. You should plan a spreadsheet and detail how much you will spend here. Most of the blogs are wrong online that tell the cost of living here. Look at this crazy article that shows how cheap Argentina is:
35 Countries Where Your Social Security Check Goes Furthest
Your Social Security benefits last a lot longer in these places.
It is totally wrong and inaccurate. You should budget private healthcare insurance and also should be aware of rentals for the quality and style that you really want to live in. Some are posting cheap rentals that NO ONE would want to live in. It's human nature to not want to live in a place that is subpar from what you lived in the past but many times you MUST do that. You have to be able to downgrade. Some can't do that.
hope that some of you older expat newcomers will be able to just skip the private insurance route which I did. I know that isn't something many feel comfortable doing but if you can't afford it then you must think about doing that. I haven't had to pay rent for 20 years as I bought my humble home many decades ago and I don't have to pay rent or HOA expenses. My monthly expenses don't exceed $1,200 which is all I have from my social security payment.
The income you need to have to get a DNI is much higher now vs. then I'm sure. and the healthcare costs are much higher now vs before. I doubt that many foreign expats will want to hassle with public hospitals. And Milei may change how public healthcare is managed for those that don't have a DNI.
Prices will definitely keep going up. I predict we will see a purge of expats here. Both young and old.
Just an FYI. My daughter just got her bill from OSDE for January. She was pleasantly surprised it only went up 11.2% ! That's how bad it is when your premium goes up 11.2% and you are happy about it! Only in Argentina. For reference, my daughter is 42 years old and has a 20-year-old on the policy as well.
Esposas
Member
Yes we also have OSDE plan and our premium just went up 11.1% But it' has been going up that much the past few months. I'm at least glad it's a gradual increase vs. 40% overnight. It's still affordable my husband said compared to the USA for private medical insurance.
earlyretirement
Moderator
Yes, this matches the increase in my premiums that I'm paying for my employees with OSDE. It went up 11.15% this past month.
Pink Panther
Well-known member
Sorry to break the news but I just got an email that OSDE is also going up 39.6% and that will be due in mid-February! So they are just 1 month cycle behind. So that will go up in February 2024. You knew it was too good to be true.
earlyretirement
Moderator
Yes, Pink Panther is correct. Too good to be true! I saw this in my email this morning. 39.80% increase starting February 14, 2024. Ouch.
RN in BA
Well-known member
39.8% increase in healthcare premiums overnight!?? Holy smokes! I guess I was wise in not coming to live in Argentina. How can one budget and plan when inflation is that bad? How will the average person afford to pay medical premiums? I was doing some private nursing and they were saying they were struggling and fired me. I guess I left BA at a good time!
Avocado
Well-known member
Expect this sort of thing to keep happening with Javier Milei. This is the President you elected. Previously the government had a law they couldn't raise it much more than 11% a month. Now you are seeing the fire and rain of Milei. You talk about inflation under Massa. True. But they weren't raising healthcare premiums 40% in one month! You expats better hope the blue dollar goes back up after January or something tells me that many of you will be leaving soon.
Engage explore adapt in your expat community.
