But note that access often depends on your insurance plan and ability to pay as well as the presence of suitable experts and facilities.
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In terms of the ‘second home in a warm and kind of exotic place’ - has anyone lived part time in Hawaii or thought about it? S and his gf have said they’d love to live there sometime (perhaps part of the year) - ideally. Would be fun to do that as a family if they’d want us to join. 
Thinking the pros are that it’s part of the US (love our justice system [for the post part] and all its protections), safe, accessible (althouhg long flight). Cons are that the flights (I checked) are super duper expensive and the cost of renting/groceries is moderately (although not astronomically) high.
@busdriver11 - that’s terrifying re: the stroke and no help at the Swiss hospital. Somehow you’d think they would have great medical care there!
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Why do emergencies always happen on the weekends? We’ve had difficult situations arrive on Saturdays and the care hasn’t been great. One time I was admitted for a kidney infection and they just didn’t have staff experienced enough to get an IV needle in my arm. It took seven tries. It was agonizing. And my son always seems to need a psychiatric hospitalization on Friday night or Saturday morning. He ends up spending three days in the ER, typically. 
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I thought I remember mention it one time on CC - $500/yr. The issue here is it covers for an airlift to your home hospital when you are traveling overseas. If you are living abroad then your home wouldn’t be United States.
I have an airlift coverage through AmEx platinum as part of my benefits. I have put my mother on my card, so she’ll also be covered when traveling.
If I were to live abroad, it would be part time as a second home, not my primary resident.
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As I recall, the times we have gone to the emergency rooms in Seattle, seems like they weren’t even allowed to ask about insurance upon entry. It was always after the fact. And now, while there are certainly people who fall through the cracks, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies allow many people to be insured who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it. If you live near a major city in the US, you likely have access to specialists and quality care.
But note that Medicare does not cover everything, which is why people buy Medicare supplements or Medicare Advantage plans. Also, if the “best” providers are out-of-network for whatever plan you have, using them may be unaffordable.
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Medicaid pays for 100% of my son’s medical care. And they’ve never pressured the hospital to release him too soon.
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My mom, here in the US, had a medical emergency before her cancer was detected. Her blood hemoglobin was down to 6 (should be 12). The hospital gave her 4 pints of blood, but said tests to determine what was wrong would have to wait until Monday because it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and no one was there who could do it. They said they could only do something in an emergency. When I updated a friend of mine who’s a doctor, she said, “If that’s not an emergency, what is?”
Good medical care is a crapshoot IME. You can have a superb doctor in a small place anywhere in the world or you can get ignored or dismissed in one of the highest ranked places in the world (BTDT after my brain tumor).
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Obviously not every single person is going to be able to access the best medical providers, and get the top level medical care in every single situation, in every single hospital in every single block in the United States.
But my point is that my husband was not able to get the most basic of critical care, in an emergency room in the largest hospital in a large town in Switzerland, the one that they send people to for strokes. There was no other hospital that they could send him to that offered more care. The doctor prescribed a blood thinner to him without analyzing what kind of stroke it was, which if he had a hemorrhagic stroke, might have killed him.
Insurance or not, I don’t think this is a common occurrence in large cities in the US. It sure isn’t in Seattle.
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Emergency rooms aren’t allowed to ask and they have to patch one up to make it to the next “real” doctor’s appt. aka They shouldn’t let you die.
Getting treatments after the emergency to fix anything totally depends upon ones ability to pay. We went through all of that with the brain tumor too - having to come up with mid 5 digits of downpayment to get the type of radiation the doctors thought would be best for my tumor since the hospital wasn’t convinced it would be paid for otherwise. They said they’d been assured it would be covered by insurance only to have the companies decline payments telling them they thought it was a different (cheaper) kind. If the insurance company won’t pay up front, the patient has to or it won’t be done.
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@busdriver11, my sil had a stroke while on vacation in the states. On a Sunday.
She told her husband she thought she was having a stroke, they went to the emergency room and were immediately put into the stroke protocol.
Which as I remember was 24 hours in the ICU as the first 24 hours after you’ve had a stroke are THE most important.
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Why so expensive @MaineLonghorn? Have ticket prices soared now, or due to other reasons?
Beirut to Maine is always expensive. But it is higher than a couple of years ago. I didn’t ask my son how much he looked but he’s usually good at getting good prices.
Wow, that is fantastic she recognized the stroke and went in right away, @deb922 .
Absolutely, time is critical for a stroke. If someone goes in immediately and is diagnosed with an ischemic stroke (as opposed to a hemorrhagic stroke, much less common), if they can diagnose it working 3 1/2-4 hours after happening, they can administer tpa, which can entirely reverse the effects of a stroke. Now we know where every major stroke center is located in Seattle (and there are a number of them close to us), just in case.
More advice given to us by the Seattle doctors was to arrive by ambulance, since it will be taken more seriously, and request to go to a stroke center. Minutes count.
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That’s good advice, busdriver11 (arrive by ambulance, request stroke center). Both my parents had strokes and I didn’t know that…
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@Jolynne_Smyth sadly, I think most of us don’t know it until it happens to us, and even then it seems random to get that information. I’m sorry about your parents.
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Thanks, busdriver11. 
At the end of the day, I don’t really think those things would have made much of a difference to my parents (mom had a hemorragic stroke). So in a way that information doesn’t produce a lot of regret for me. But, so, so useful for others! I will for sure pass it along to my friends…
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When medical boy was here with us earlier this month I asked him why one should call an ambulance to get to the hospital when it was so much quicker to take someone there ourselves where we live. He said it’s because the ambulance calls in their cases to the hospital allowing them to be waiting and ready there. If we were to opt to drive ourselves, then we should call in and at least let them know what we suspect (what the symptoms are) so they can be ready.
He also noted that ambulances have fluids and meds on them that they can start for certain situations, so another thought is, “can the ambulance get here before I could get to the hospital?” In our location, I’m not sure - nor was he. In other places, esp cities, I would think that’s likely.
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Yep, and at our local emergency room in our old town (which I unfortunately was a frequent visitor with my parents), if you come in by ambulance, they take you into a treatment room immediately. If you bring someone in, you are put in the waiting room, and unless it’s super obvious that you needed immediate attention, you wait.
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