| August 17th, 2009 |
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For some reason, it only *just* occurred to me - in reaction to a post by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) synecdochic - that if I lived in America, I myself would be "uninsurable". Given my medical needs are currently non-zero and ongoing, that would really comprehensively suck. (And I doubt my last job would have supplied me with insurance even while I was still working there.)
It's a disconcerting realisation - the American health care debates are something which I've watched with concern, and I care about it in principle, but... I live in Australia, so it doesn't seem like it applies to me. We have socialised medicine and I have private health insurance that I've had since very early childhood. We stayed with the same company as my father changed jobs, during the brief periods when he's been between jobs, I stayed with them after I became an adult and wasn't covered under my parent's plan, even when *I've* been unemployed.
I don't currently have a job. I'm a student. I'm still with HBF.
Even if I hadn't been covered since I was a toddler by the same company (thus precluding the concept of a "pre-existing condition", since I was less than two years old and was then, as far as I know, healthy), I could still get health insurance, and even if I didn't have it, I could still get affordable health care.
It's weird to think that if I was American, that wouldn't be the case, given how close I came to *being* American. My parents possibly, perhaps even probably, would have emigrated there had America not, then, asked that they have something like $100,000 in savings to be permitted to do so. They didn't have that much money, so we came to Australia, because Australia wanted my father's skillset and were eager to have us.
I'm really quite profoundly glad that, in the end, we came here. Australia has its flaws, but I'm rather relieved that I grew up here.Current Music: oliver mowing the lawn with a push mower and chatting with Dave
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