[ExI] simple solution to health care

[Emlyn]

2009/6/25 Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>:
> At 03:47 PM 6/25/2009 +0930, Emlyn wrote:
>
>> > Cost: $16,000, with bills still dribbling
>> > in. Thank god at least I didn't have to suffer the metaphysical horrors
>> > and
>> > shame of socialized medicine.
>>
>> Holy crap. You've got to get back to where the toilets flush the right
>> way, before some really serious shit happens.
>
> Can't. Luckily I had been paying an extortionate amount for insurance in the
> three years previous, which just about equaled the extortionate hospital
> bills (or that portion the insurer grudgingly agreed to pay). I'm now
> eligible for Medicare, which of course I'd have had in Australia routinely
> and paid the 1.5% levy for it; here I shell out more than $5500 a year,
> roughly what I was already paying. Eventually I'll come under the umbrella
> of my wife's eligibility and it will be free. And of course all the tax I've
> paid in Australia for decades doesn't count here, despite alleged tax
> treaties. But hey, I decided to come here to live. Emlyn, a substantial 4
> bathroom 2 storey house in downtown San Antonio near us sold for $US155,000,
> and another $50K for repairs to make it very livable. In Melbourne or
> Adelaide you'd get an outdoor dunny or chook run for that, without the house
> to go with it.
>
> Damien Broderick

About housing, yes that's absolutely right. Bloody country hasn't had
the decency to have a proper real-estate crash.

Here's a recent survey of developed world housing affordability:
http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf
(from http://www.demographia.com/#land)

Adelaide in Australia ranks as the 12th most "severely unaffordable"
housing markets. Interestingly, that paper blames government
regulation of land use (ie: restricting supply?) for the housing
bubble.

Still, house prices do not equal affordability in terms of living.
There's always the option of renting, and while rents have also
increased a bit in recent years, I think they dropped recently (they
seem to roughly move with interest rates). I rent, and I'll keep
renting, until/unless we have a proper price crash here.

I do think house prices are trending down here, but nothing like the
fall in the US. I must admit that I saw some recent house prices in
California and was quite tempted!

-- 
Emlyn

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