My wife and I are not-so-many years from retirement. Ten years ago, we were already planning to retire someplace with more reasonable healthcare. We were already confident in that decision, but the current situation has made it absolute, and possibly pushed the timeline forward.
Which specific countries have more reasonable healthcare, and also allow retirees to immigrate? Most countries are reluctant to take in people who seem like non-productive burdens. If you're wealthy you can sometimes buy your way in, but wealthy people in the US already have access to excellent healthcare.
Generally you get insurance but it's way less than in the U.S.
As an example, when we were in Portugal 8 years ago we needed to get my wife's prescriptions refilled and the person we were staying with said to go to the ER. We confirmed repeatedly and then did as they suggested.
The doctor at the ER questioned us and said "we could have been busy and you would have had to wait."
But long story short, we spent about half an hour all up to get the prescriptions, and it cost us $27. That was with zero insurance, paying full freight. Filling the prescriptions with no insurance cost less than the co-pay in the U.S.
As far as I've researched:
Portugal will let retirees in and after five years you can get citizenship -- you might still want insurance, but it's affordable.
Spain is similar I think, and we're also looking at Italy, Greece, and Croatia.
In Uruguay you need insurance, but if you start a business it's straightforward.
In Thailand healthcare in general is excellent and mostly affordable.
We're looking at 30-40 countries all up, but those are the main ones we're looking at.
"Wealthy" is relative -- for example the minimum monthly income to get a visa for Portugal is something like $1,000 for one person, $1,700 for two. And we don't plan to live the high life, we just want someplace with nice weather, nice history/scenery, and that won't require us to do GoFundMe's to fund our future.
