US Ex-pats for Healthcare Reform: Time to stand up and be counted

I have started a Facebook group called "US expats for Healthcare Reform".

Something struck me when reading through the comment section of Nicholas Kristof's recent column on healthcare reform -- so many of the comments were from American expats living in countries with Universal healthcare who were writing in with personal stories of how favorably "socialized medicine" compared to the healthcare they would have gotten/been able to afford back home. These are real people in different walks of life with first-hand experiences. They are eager to tell their stories, and I think their stories deserves to be heard widely by their fellow Americans who have not had the same frame of reference.

It looks like getting a decent healthcare system with universal coverage will continue to be a pitched battle for some time to come. And the most important arena for this battle is the court is the court of public opinion. I am enlisting all the expats or ex-expats or anyone who simply have experiences both US care and insurance and the care in a country with universal healthcare, like Sweden or Taiwan or Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea....the list goes on. Let's stand up and be counted, and get our stories together in one place that's accessible, and try to reach out to our fellow Americans.

If you have facebook, join the group and leave your story on the wall. If not, leave a comment at this post. Make sure you leave your name, the country where you got the care, some description of the kind of care you got and the cost and whether you were satisfied with it compared with the baseline of the coverage you got in the US. I have heard so many stories. Hell, I have a few of my own...but that's another post for another day.

US Expats for Healthcare Reform: because one day I might want to go back to my own country.