It’s a good reason to leave and immigrate elsewhere, even if one has to pay US taxes and gets paid less income. You cannot put a price on your health.
I naturalized as a citizen elsewhere over US healthcare because I know it is only going to get worse long term. With 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent), I want to stay alive long term, and so that was the best possible choice I could make.
I am extremely well versed in immigration, acquiring citizenships, healthcare systems, and healthcare delivery and logistics, and so if anyone wants help or advice, feel free to email me (see my profile).
What's the best combination of close to the US, high living standards, good healthcare, and feasible to immigrate to as an American with a pretty normal professional career?
If you want a decent public answer, then I need to know which continents are off limits to be able to help you. You are being way too vague here. Also, a lot of the help I can give is only useful when discussed privately. I obviously do not want anything to do with confidential information, and I do not need that to help people. It's just that posting certain details about yourself online is not appropriate via public websites. That is why I give my email (see profile).
Typically getting citizenship in /any/ European Union + European Free Trade Association country (minus Liechtenstein--has an immigration quota) is the best deal for an American.
The reason why? Becoming a citizen of one of these countries confers you EU or EFTA citizenship (let's just call it EU citizenship). Once you become an EU citizen, you have the right to live/work/retire in about 30 different countries. You are also always seen as "The American" with your American educational credentials and American work experience.
So, if you can just spend like 5-10 years in one of those countries (sometimes a less desirable one), get the citizenship, you can then move to somewhere more desired that is much harder to obtain citizenship in--permanently.
Usually the place to go for Americans is Ireland, where you can get citizenship in 5 years. Ireland also permits dual citizenship. Not only can you live/work/retire anywhere in the EU+EFTA: because of ties to the UK, having Irish citizenship gives you rights to live/work/retire in the UK.
Also, pay attention to who is top on this list (5 of the top 10 are in the EU + EFTA):
This means that they do not have to get their employer to do a skilled work test, which means they would otherwise have to prove that they are "not taking away a job from an EU citizen", which is a very high standard to meet.
The problem with Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, is that they have medical inadmissibility clauses in their immigration laws. This means that if you or anyone in your family is expected to (or do) cost more than $19,500 CAD/year, $8,000 AUD/year, or $7,500 NZD/year in medical or social services, or both, as an individual: you and your family are medically inadmissible to those countries and will be denied entry. If you or a family member goes over that threshold at any point, your entire family will be forced to go home and leave, even if working full-time and otherwise fully contributing and integrating into society. I would not be surprised if the UK does something like this post-Brexit.
This statistic has been corroborated by other studies (search: "third leading cause of death medical errors US"). You cannot evade statistics like that by going to the "best hospitals", or by "having good insurance", or being "able to pay for it".
I nearly died at age 22 from multiple medical errors over the same hospitalization. I am in my early 30s now. It still haunts me. I nearly died from severe diabetic ketoacidosis (blood pH got down to 7.03) from the hospital messing up insulin dosages (I have type 1 diabetes), and then I had to get a central line in my neck for treatment because I was so dehydrated. I got sepsis from the central line placement, which is never supposed to happen. I was not even hospitalized initially for any of the above mentioned reasons!
Then there are things like this: Death or Debt? National Estimates of Financial Toxicity in Persons with Newly-Diagnosed Cancer (42% of newly diagnosed cancer patients exhaust their life assets, with the average losses being $92,098)
Then if you have a rare disease, which 7-8% of the general population collectively has, you often have to rely on orphan drugs (like me). There are 8,000 or so rare diseases. I actually have 2 rare diseases, and one of them is so rare that it will not be cured without personalized medicine.
One of the things which made me give up hope in the US was stuff like this, where very rare diseases become treatable, but the yearly cost of the drug (under contract via insurance) is ~$2 million/year, and it has to be taken for life. This is a new trend, and it makes me distraught.
Currently, the country I am a citizen of (besides the US), is about to have the same lifespan for females as the US (which I am female). The country went through a nasty war with the breakup of Yugoslavia. I am proud of my country, I mean Croatia. I also have the EU to fall back on. With the US, there is very little that can be done to protect me, from a work and insurance perspective.
I guess this entire thread is a dumping ground for other grievances, because nobody's able to explain how the GP comment's urge to vote connects with their experience, despite my asking.
We do not know explicitly how, but we have shared a mutual experience trying to get things through the US healthcare system, one way or another.
Things like prior authorization (getting a bureaucrat to give you permission to take this medication), prescription formularies (exclusion lists--you cannot take this medication under any circumstance), and step therapy (you must take a less effective medicine--and fail--before trying a more expensive and more effective medication. This occurs even with serious conditions like cancer and multiple sclerosis), quite literally kill.
I know an American in Japan who is on 3 biologics there. In the US, all 3 would require prior authorization, and 2 of them would be denied, because you can only get authorization to get 1 at a time. He could fight for coverage, via ERISA, through his employer, in court, but he would lose his colon before he would win. Then, when he loses his colon, he cannot sue for damages because of ERISA.
Dude, conversations break down on forums all the time. I use a screenreader and braille to read posts. I read things linearly because of this. It's not like I do not notice a coherent breakdown of conversation as the posts go further down the webpage.
I naturalized as a citizen elsewhere over US healthcare because I know it is only going to get worse long term. With 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent), I want to stay alive long term, and so that was the best possible choice I could make.
I am extremely well versed in immigration, acquiring citizenships, healthcare systems, and healthcare delivery and logistics, and so if anyone wants help or advice, feel free to email me (see my profile).