Health insurance a lees of a concern, in practice. Catastrophic coverage is pretty cheap from places like IMG Global, and doctors here are happy to take payment directly for more routine things if you’re not on the national plan. And that payment is forty dollars because there’s are no insurance companies to gouge, so gouging isn’t something doctors do.

Personally, I got around the “permission to live” thing by mildly abusing schengen tourist visas for a while, then marrying an English girl. If I had to do it again, I’d go for one of the “show us you have a ton of money in the bank” visa routes. Again, that US bill rate comes in handy...