You can go to developing countries. The health care I received in Southeast Asia was quite good and the full cost was significantly less than just the co-pays on my plan in the US. Thailand has a retirement visa that allows for 6-month stays and you can live quite comfortably there for under $20k/yr.

I'm sure care is adequate in many developing countries if you get the clap or get injured in a car accident. But I'm skeptical you're likely to get as good cardiac or oncology care.

Cardiac and oncology care is top notch in Thai and Indian facilities where Westerners would patron, based on my medical tourism research.

Dat arbitrage!

Sure, but is the same true for the Philippines or Thailand?

Thai = Thailand in my above comment.

I don't know about the Philippines, but happy to look into it.

That's an interesting visa, although the monthly income requirement of THB 65,000 would be beyond me.

65,000 THB = 1,885.17 USD

That is 37,760 USD / year. Too much?

edit: Whoops, should be 22,622.04 USD / year

Yeah, I make nowhere near that much as a retiree.

So the trick is to persuade your children to emigrate to those countries, and then sponsor your visa.

Not true. Retirees with generous pensions are a great opportunity for any country. They will bring money to your country without the need to produce anything. They won't consume a lot of public resources (no need of school or of police repression). They will reform a house, eat in your good restaurants, and enjoy all the services you can offer.

A lot of countries hunt for wealthy retirees, like Portugal and Australia. Sure you must have your health insurance.

Sure, they'll consume all the services you offer, and especially health care, as the parent suggests. But, yes, you need to have a generous pension, as well as meet another number of requirements that vary from place to place.

In order to emigrate and retire in New Zealand[1], for example, you need to

a) be healthy b) bring your own insurance c) bring ~$350k in savings and $40k annual income with you

The UK imposes an "independent means[2]" requirement, to prevent retirees from being a drain on the economy, as does Australia, Canada[3], etc.

[1] - http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/072115...

[2] - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083052/Foreigners-6...

[3] - http://www.livingabroadincanada.com/getting-started/retireme...

Or, in the case of New Zealand at least, already be a permanent resident :D

> They won't consume a lot of public resources (no need of school or of police repression).

Either the host country's end-of-life medical care is not great by American standards (in which case what you write is true, but many Americans wouldn't care to move), or it is, and a retiree would consume considerable public resources. Unfortunately, there's no way to have it both ways.

There actually is a way: move to a country where the same level of care costs less even with no government subsidies. I think this would include most of Europe and the far East.

Or the doctors and hospital admins there only make a terrific salary instead of an obscene one.

This is the result of central planning on the part of government. It allowed the AMA to do insane things like stopping new medical schools from opening for DECADES. It allows the AMA to continue to artificially limit the practitioners in all medical professions to keep wages high.

As a specific anecdote of the problem of government in healthcare: in my city a new children's hospital opened up a few years ago. The other area hospitals petitioned the government to not allow them to build the hospital until certain concessions were met. Among the concessions I'm aware of are not allowing the new hospital to own a medical chopper for 8 years. It was also not allowed to build a Level 1 trauma center. And of course that's after YEARS of not even being able to break ground while all this negotiating and concessions were being figured out. This type of interference raised the cost of healthcare for everyone in my city while likely decreasing the quality of care.

There's more to that story. Typically the problem is that there are too many hospital beds, not too few.

Outpatient treatment is increasingly more popular and more cost effective. Hospitals often raise costs by introducing massive capital costs that need to be amortized as well as other overheads.

With the exception of lower-cost, higher value primary care, there are rarely any meaningful access issues to doctors in metro areas. Those shortages are largely being addressed with PAs and NPs.

>Typically the problem is that there are too many hospital beds, not too few.

I'd be interested in a citation for this because it's counter to basic economic theory of supply and demand. If the supply outpaces demand, then the price should be going down, not up.

ECO 101 fails all over the place.

Here's an example. A quick good will find you many more. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150221/magazine/30...

Medical services are a complex market. It's nonsensical to randomly apply basic economic principles without knowing what you are doing. (Good luck telling congress that) The smart thing to do is to make primary care more accessible -- you'd be able to close many hospitals and improve outcomes.

I see what you mean, but the over-priced beds are just a temporary phenomenon while smaller more agile competitors are killing the large facilities. In the end, cheaper service for health care is still being found from new competitors moving into the market.

Why does the government care what the other hospitals think? Would they stop a new burger bar opening too close to a McDonalds, if McDonalds petitioned them for long enough?

Yes, it's the way the world works. Homeowners vote against new developments (which decreases the cost of their homes). Everyone with a liquor license lobbies against more liquor licenses. Every grocery store lobbies against more grocery stores. Amusingly this causes big issues between state governments (who wants growth) and cities where most voters/business owners want to limit growth to protect themselves.

The cynical reason is because the hospitals are massive tax-bases and the owners of the hospitals are political donors.

The other reason is that the government has an interest in maximizing economic growth, among other things, which is why it has zoning power. Citizens in the area, including local businesses such as other hospitals, may raise any number of concerns about building projects. Further, any citizen (or corporation) can hold up just about any project for as long as it's willing to keep paying legal fees to fight projects based on trumped up bullshit about esoteric zoning laws that were written a century ago that they probably broke when building their own hospital.

> They won't consume a lot of public resources

If you ignore healthcare, nursing homes, etc., perhaps.

Those aren't public resources. That's why they typically only let you in if you're relatively wealthy.