Here's something to make you and our Croatian buddy Markost12 feel much better: Ever hear the expression "The grass is always greener on the other side?"

John's post is spot on. Americans enjoy some of the lowest tax rates and cheapest M3s in the Western world. YES!

But there is never a free ride. Our health care costs are well-documented as the #1 cause of family bankruptcy in the USA. As long as we can stay relatively healthy we will enjoy our relatively "cheap" M3s and X5Ms. But when cancer and heart disease come knocking at the door (because we are all mortals and can't stay healthy forever), our health insurance companies get a sudden urge to send us "Denial of Coverage" letters. Why?? Based on the fact that when we were 19 years old we had the audacity to smoke 2 cigarettes in a row, WITHOUT notifying them. Or perhaps we had a couple of distant cousins with diabetes, and had the balls to not check the "previous family history" box during the insurance enrollment period. Pretty much any convenient excuse to not do what an insurance comapny is SUPPOSED to do: pay up.

And thus the avalanche of $$$thousands$$$ and $$thouusands$$ worth of medical bills begins. Our mailboxes becomes flooded with bills from doctors' assiciations you never heard of, labs who received aromatic samples of your pee and poop, hospital administrators, anaesthesiologists, and ultimately, collection agencies. And the bills start to stack up. American living rooms turn into skyscrapers of paper notices with big red lettering, and the words "PAST DUE" and "DELINQUENT". The big, wonderful free-enterprise health insurance company that you thought would take care of you or your family (Because after all, you have dutifully paid your monthly health-insurance deductions at work) suddenly disappears. And you discover, to your bewilderment, that American health-insurance whole business model is based on denying as many large claims as possible. You thought they were your saviours when they covered your family's routine check-ups and your antibiotic subscriptions. And they were certainly happy to cover those small routine bills. But as soon as big-money surgeries, hospitalizations, MRIs, and chronic illnesses rear their ugly heads, the big, kind American health insurance companies get very technical and defensive. They have entire departments dedicated to coming up with excuses for why certain procedures cannot be re-imbursed. Or for why your Aunt Betsy's hospital stay was too long by 4.7 days. Their executive bonuses are directly tied in to how many claims they were able to successfully reject.

And suddenly the money you thought you had saved by paying $30,000 less for your M3 than your friend from Belgium, gets wiped out in a matter of weeks. So while on the eastern side of the Atlantic your "evil" Government health program lets your beloved family member concentrate on getting better, and on recovering without receiving "X5M-price" medical bills in their mailbox....one serious injury or illness on the western side of the Atlantic can easily render an entire family bankrupt.

John's point is that it all evens out in the end, so no need to feel slighted about your 'M' taxes and tariffs.