Posts Tagged ‘emigrant’

As you all may know, right now President Obama is fighting for a better healthcare system in the US. Even if this will not be the answer to any problems of the United States health system, it is something that gives us future emigrants a better feeling.

We Germans live in a country were health insurance kind of comes natural. Even if you lose your job in Germany the government will pay for your health insurance. You can also join a private health insurance to get better treatments, but in general you are covered by a compulsory health insurance. I only know about a handful of people who have been without health insurance ever. And that only, because they were in between university and their first job and didn’t have the nerves or the will to change their health insurance status and pay higher contributions. Health care is something I never had to think about a lot. In Germany you can go to whatever doctor you want to go without worrying much about it. Yes, you have to pay extra for certain treatments, but in general no doctor would send you home, if you are in misery.

One of the first things, that everyone asks a future US emigrant here in Germany is: “Wow, you are willing to move to a country with no existing health care?” It is hard to make people understand that there is not no health insurance at all in the US, but that it is tricky and that you can get in debt when being really sick, because your insurance can kick you out. The goal of Obama’s reform is to decrease the number of Americans without health insurance from 17 percent to five percent. And to ban the insurance companies to decline ill people or even kick people out, who become ill.

We talked about the health system a lot in the last months. I am not ill very often, but I do want to get pregnant and have kids in the near future and this is a really scary thing when you think about doing this without health insurance. But the fact that you now can be covered by an insurance even if you do not work, takes a big load off my mind.

These days I am kind of emotional. The birth of my little nephew again made me realize how fast my last year in Germany is running by and how soon I will be separated from my family and friends. I had a long talk with my friend Petra in London, who told me about an article she read about how women tend to stick to friendships just for the sake of not losing them and not because of their “quality”. This is a big issue for me considered that I will be a thousand miles away from my friends very soon.

I think especially at my age when you get married, start your own family, have to work overtime etc. you come to realize who the people are which you can count on the most. I call myself lucky to have many great friends and I am a hundred percent sure that I will not lose the closest of them during the whole emigration process. But there are also some friends I am nearly a hundred percent sure to lose in the next couple of years.

I would describe myself as a very emotional and sensible person when it comes to dealing with problems in a friendship. Nearly every fight with close friends makes my stomach twist for days and kills me from the inside. But in the last couple of months I noticed a change in me dealing with this kind of problems. I grew much more confident and am not so afraid to let go friends anymore. I guess this is one of the best changes I can make before moving away to another continent. I know from friends experiences that – especially as an emigrant – you realize very fast who your real friends are and I don’t want myself to get even more emotionally injured, than I already will be.

So even if it is a hard thing to do, I guess I should cut off some time I used to spend with worrying about different friendships and spend much more quality time with the people I really love and who honestly love me back!