To be a bit envious of this lifestyle? (USA)

[ThePinkPonyClub]

I've just watched School Swap: UK to USA on Channel 4 and have ended up feeling a teensy bit jealous of the kind of lifestyle that's possible over there.

Even normal, non wealthy families seemed to be able to live really outdoorsy lifestyles where they can hike and hunt and boat amongst the gorgeous scenery. I feel like in the UK, even rurally it isn't possible as everywhere is so densely populated especially when the weather is nice. The weather is also a limiting factor!

I'm obviously not jealous of the MAGA/Trump craziness or the crappy healthcare and all the rest of the political stuff but purely the lifestyle side of things, it seems so much more possible to live in that free, outdoorsy kind of way.

And the schools seemed to have a much more positive, enthusiastic culture with things like school sports and dances, compared to the UK teens in their drab uniforms staring at their phones the whole time in their miserable, run down secondary school.

aibu? Anyone live this kind of life in the UK? If so, where?!

It is terrifying. I have a trip coming up and I am for the first time really quite nervous as a non-citizen.

@DdraigGoch ah I really love Stockholm- we used to go lots when we lived in Copenhagen - we still go most new years - it’s dull and a bit gloomy or sometimes very snowy but there’s something I love about it . The great lighting, the lakes, warm and cozy cafes and bars, so many swedes who chat to us, and the fact they’ve got a chain called greasy spoon ( and yep it is , albeit a very good one )

This is a fair take. I'm an American in the US and my mother in law had a health event that resulted in two months' stay in the hospital, followed by a month at an acute rehab facility for intensive physical therapy. My in laws have excellent health insurance but have still been told by medical staff to prepare themselves for a high seven figure medical bill, after insurance. The reports you see about the cost of our healthcare are not hyperbole.

I found the picturesque coastal towns and bays to look very similar in: Croatia, Italy, France, and the Swiss lake of Maggiore. I went to Russia briefly and did not find it samey, although some of the baroque architecture there reminded me of some other parts of Europe. I thought Tallin was somewhat similar to some German towns, such as Nuremberg, and to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. The lakes and mountains of the Swiss Alps, the French Alps, the Slovenian mountains looked somewhat similar. The German mountain towns reminded me of the Swiss Alps towns. I just saw a lot of similarities between many of the countries I'd been to. I haven't been to Greece but their island architecture of white buildings with cobalt-blue roofs looks unique. Brussels reminded me a little of German cities.

I found Copenhagen and Helsinki not too dissimilar.

Ahh, you'll be OK!

Brighton actually, but why do you say Portmeirion? What's that got to do with the price of fish? 😂 Seems a bit random! Never been there - only know the china!

Yeah, the luck of the draw probably has much to do with it.

@ThisFluentBiscuit ah but Copenhagen and Helsinki don’t look like Seville or Rome or Dubrovnik etc

I'm not understanding this; most insurance plans have an annual limit beyond which you don't pay. I think mine is $8k. I'm sorry, but medical bills of high seven figures when you have insurance just do not exist. Something is very wrong in that scenario. I think you must have something wrong there - high seven figures would be about $9 million!! Even having a heart transplant with no insurance wouldn't cost anything near $9m!

Regardless, your DH needs to ask his mother what the annual limit on her plan is.

ETA: A high five-figure bill would make more sense. Some people like to gamble and pay very low premiums on the assumption that nothing too awful will happen, but for those plans, the annual limit of $16k is more likely. If you choose a low-premium plan and your care extends over two calendar years, then the expenses could be $32k. But you shouldn't get a low-premium plan if you don't have the savings to cover two years of the limit - and it's a known expense that you can plan for. If she's on the hook for two years of a high annual limit, that's something she should have known and budgeted for in case of emergency, or else paid higher premiums. You sign up for that when you choose your plan.

Stockholm was anything but dull and gloomy the other day. The sun was out, the daffodils were up, and the cherry blossoms were in flower.

Helsinki is probably better in June, more museums etc. will be open and the flowers will be out.

No. I'm not saying that it's all exactly the same, I'm saying that I noticed many similarities between many European countries, which I described somewhere above.

Yes, Tallinn old town looks a little Germanic. But completely different to what you would find in parts of Bavaria. Which in turn is nothing like the villages on the Med you were describing. Hamburg is dramatically different again. Alpine villages look very un-Mediterranean too.

The scenery really isn’t the same either, I watched an episode of The Acolyte recently and could instinctively tell (before I googled to check) that the location filming was Welsh (was filmed in the Bannau Brycheiniog). Because it is unique. Likewise the Alps are dramatically different to the Low Countries or to the Cote d'Azur.

So away with your "the US is the most diversest place on the planet" (paraphrasing a little here). It's no more or less diverse than anywhere else. You're just picking various neighbouring countries and pointing out that they're similar (well yes, they've probably invaded one another at some point), never mind that if you take photos in neighbouring states in the US they'll look similar too. In fact if you go into a random suburb somewhere in the US you'll find the same pickup trucks sat outside the same single family homes with identical lawns and occupied by the same white people as another suburb in another state on the other side of the country. Drive a little and you'll get to a six lane stroad with an identikit strip mall.

See, I can selectively pick examples to suit my argument too.

On the basis that you posted a picture of a Mediterranean village and said words to the effect of "see, that could be anywhere in Europe". Portmeirion is the only place in the UK to look even vaguely like that.

Unfortunately, even good insurance - not low cost plans - the out of network maximum has exceptions, particularly out of network care and medical procedures and medications that the insurance company deems unnecessary. In an emergency situation, it's not always possible to check and ensure that the medical staff available is in network, and then have time to reject that care and wait to for doctors who are. Additionally, there are often discrepancies between what hospital care teams and insurance companies deem medically necessary. I wish out of pocket maximums worked as they're intended, but it's not always the case. No final bill has come yet, that estimate is just a loose amount my FIL was told to expect, so no, likely not $9M. But likely within 7 figures. Fortunately, to your point about having savings to cover it, my in laws will be able to pay their bill. It doesn't mean that that is ok, either.

I know about the out-of-network thing, and I must be lucky because being close to a major hospital, I don't really have to deal with that. If you got an out-of-network provider that you couldn't help, like you collapsed, needed surgery, and the anaesthetist was out of network, then that's ripe for negotiation.

I have a very hard time believing that your MIL has excellent insurance yet will get a bill of at least a million dollars. I've never heard of any such thing. I know plenty of people who've had longterm cancer treatment and only paid up to their annual limit. Something is very wrong. Even with co-insurance, you'd be limited in how much you have to pay by your annual limit.

So, according to Google, a heart transplant costs about $1.6m if you have no insurance. If my plan has 20% co-insurance, I'd be responsible for $333,333 of my heart transplant. But! My annual limit is $8k, so I'd pay no more than $8k. (Hope this helps non-Americans reading.)

Your MIL must have had extensive treatment for something very skilled and complex with every provider being out of network (very unlikely) for this million-dollar-bill-with-insurance to be real. I'm sorry, but I know US health insurance inside out, and your PIL have got it wrong. You'd better look into it, in case they end up paying when they shouldn't.

Totally fine that you have a hard time believing it - we're on a public forum so I'm not comfortable sharing more specifics, but unfortunately it's the current situation in my husband's family. Having collapsed and needing immediate care would have been a better situation, as would have a heart transplant. I know it's annoying when posters on Mumsnet say, I can't share more because it would be outing, but that's the case here. I'm glad that it's not happening often enough for you to have experience with it, and of course the game plan is to appeal.

Well, there's no need to get so aerated! All along I've just been saying that many parts of Europe look like other parts, which is how I remember it. And I made clear in my post that the Med parts don't look like the Germanic-esque parts to me.

I think the American landscape is much more varied than Europe. I posted a bunch of pics to make that point.

I don't know how you can say that America's not the most diverse continent when the entire place is made of immigrants from all around the world! It's famously a melting pot! It probably seems homogenous to you because you don't know it.

Hospitals send what looks like a bill to the patient, when in fact it's what you would pay if you didn't have insurance. These docs do have THIS IS NOT A BILL stamped on them, but it's still pretty scary. And the stamp is only on one page out of many. The list is what the hospital is planning to charge the insurance. It's not that document that has a seven-figure sum on it, is it? If the family has never been very ill, they might not know what this document is. Either way, I hope your DH can look at everything very closely, because I smell a rat!

I think the American landscape is much more varied than Europe. I posted a bunch of pics to make that point.
And I could post pictures of European landscapes (I have taken many on my travels) and show how different Wales is to southern Sweden, which in turn is dramatically different from the Alps, none of which are anything like the lochs in the West Highlands or the Polish countryside.

I don't know how you can say that America's not the most diverse continent when the entire place is made of immigrants from all around the world! It's famously a melting pot! It probably seems homogenous to you because you don't know it.
"Melting pot" implies everyone mixing in together and getting along. Shall we return to the town featured in the OP? Many people there are still proud of its history as a "sundown town". Even today few people there are not WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). A mixed-race girl featured in the programme (from memory she had a white mother and a mixed black/Hispanic father) suffered considerable bullying due to her race. Her treatment in the UK was very different. The South London school was the literal definition of a "melting pot".

I'm pretty sure that I've seen statistics on cultural diversity somewhere, but my grilled bear has just arrived.

I haven't seen the programme.

Europe does not have all of the following on one land mass: desert, tropical white-sand beaches, lakes, forest, mountains, prairies, canyons, and red-rock landscapes. It just doesn't. American topography is way more diverse than Europe's.

You don't know this place or you would know that the large pockets of people from elsewhere, who have brought their language, culture, food, and customs with them, are what make it very diverse. We are THE melting pot. Not sure why you're denying it! e.g. America is the most Jewish nation in the world. In the Midwest, you find people still speaking a form of German from when settlers came there, and you also find some Scandianavian culture. The southern USA is all about South American culture, and some Caribbean too, and then up here where I am, it's all Italian and Irish Catholic. The you have the Scots-Irish in northern Florida, the French influence in northern USA near Canada, and the French-Creole influences in New Orleans. Not to mention large Chinese communities, and more....I could go on. That's before we've considered the Native American culture.

Europe may HAVE immigrants, but we ARE immigrants, all of us, except Native Americans.

@DdraigGoch Wait....grilled bear! You serious? I had that once in Slovenia, and I could hardly stand to touch it. It looked like you would imagine bear to look - had this shiny mahogany glaze. 🤮 I could never have looked Teddy in the eye again if I'd had that.

You should go to New Orleans and have fried catfish and a po-boy sandwich!

Also, 40% of America's population is non-white. That's pretty diverse for one country!

The French Alps and Swiss Alps were similar? 😂 No shit Sherlock, it's the same mountain range. We all know country boundaries are arbitrary lines on a map. I can drive to the Alps in a day but there's not anywhere in the UK that looks remotely like them.

They extend to eight countries, come to that. Someone else was trying to argue that Europe's not a bit samey-looking in some ways. And we've been discussing continental Europe, not the other bits and bobs floating about in the sea! 🤭

78% of Americans speak English as a first language. Do 78% of Europeans have English as a first language?

The bear was delicious, by the way. I would love to visit New Orleans, though Colorado is higher up my list. I was going to visit next year but I've decided to hold off until some sense of sanity returns.