Americans Head to Europe for the Good Life on the Cheap

Very recently yes. Hasn't been approved yet.

But it's kind of irrelevant because they already cashed out

>Most T2/3/4 North American cities (even the rust belt ones) have Economic indicators comparable to T1 cities in other European countries.

Yeah, and sociability/quality of life/crime rate compared to some dystopian hell-hole

At least in my area of Kansas City, and I believe many other cities, this is simply not true. Downtown Kansas City before WWII was similar to many European cities. It still has boulevards and parks, but it had 300 miles of electric street cars, row after row of mixed use business with housing above stores, and a train hub that carried passengers to about any town in the region. It was a vibrant city similar to European cities today.

Under the guise of urban renewal after WW II, they literally bulldozed rows of downtown business' to install the interstate loop. The interstates chopped the neighborhoods apart making it nearly impossible to walk from one to another. They tore down about half the other buildings to accommodate parking for all the people that now lived in suburbs and drove in. They widened roads and shrunk sidewalks. They tore out most of the passenger train service and all of the street car lines. The effect was the downtown area of KC all but died, with many boarded up buildings. It became a place nobody wanted to live with a family.

With several major infrastructure projects it is just now starting to come back. But it is still a far cry from what it was. It is still not that walkable. There is still little public transportation, with only one short street car line and one or two slow and clunky Amtrak trains a day. Most people still live in suburbs and drive in, so we have never deleted all the parking lots and rebuilt the buildings to make space for a vibrant business scene or ample housing.

Such a bad take. These people aren't there to share money, or knowledge. They're there to live like royalty while paying as little as possible.

I mean, that pretty much sums up everybody, but it seems to only be the upper classes who paint it as altruistic.

And Denmark and the Netherlands according to several. But that's what I hear.

This is a very good point— thank you.

I went to the medical center and then a hospital multiple times while on a month long trip in Spain and Portugal -- came down with a weird bronchitis thing affecting my breathing.

It was 100% free. So I definitely got free health care on a tourist visa as an American.

In most EU countries if you get a job you will have access to universal healthcare immediately

If not, private healthcare is peanuts compared to the us (think $200/month no deductible no limit)

Officially you don't have that universal healthcare as a non-resident. Reality is hit or miss.

As most EU medical systems are not really geared toward private billing, if you go to a government-run medical centre for something small, it's going to be more effort for them to figure out how to bill you, so they don't.

Sometimes tourist-heavy places will definitely be set up to get you to pay, other times they just see treating actually minorly-ill tourists for low/no-cost as a cost of being a tourist-dependent area.

Sometimes the anecdotes about only having to pay 20 EUR at the hospital were really the salaried clinic doctor squeezing some EUR out of you that really should have been paid to the state.

Other times, if you go to a private-clinic doctor solo, they'll likely make you pre-pay. But if it's your local family's doctor, they may see you for free on a goodwill-basis, or fraudulently bill your local family member's plan and/or write any prescription in their name.

I'm not sure why there is an assumption that the health care is good in Portugal. Purely annecdotal, the only Portuguese person I know moved to UK to work as a cleaner. She couldn't find work in Portugal that would pay enough to allow her to survive. Also she moved her dad over too because he need health care and needed to be near family. I've never looked into, I just assumed that the economy and it's health care aren't great.

I wonder how much further the situation in the US has to deteriorate until we stop referring to those moving to Europe as Expats and call them Refugees?

This term seems to be reserved (with an often racist/classist connotation) for people from the global south.

  > Lack of universal healthcare in the US isn't that big a deal to the upper-class/upper-middle class people 

It's not an issue for poor people either, since they have Medicaid. Or old people, who have Medicare. Or veterans who have Tricare.

Health insurance is generally only an issue for middle to lower middle class.