VOX: This Trump voter didn't think Trump was serious about repealing her health insurance

[DFW]

45. Stories like this, plus what just happened to my wife, make me glad I live in Germany

Two months ago, she was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of cancer knicknamed "the murderer" in the clinic where she was treated. She needed a drastic 5 hour operation, and she needed it FAST.

Germany has a two-tier health insurance. Basically: "Privat," in which you pay up front and your insurance USUALLY reimburses you, and "Kassenpatient" which means you are a second class citizen, and they take you when they'll take you, so shut up and don't complain. They have hidden quotas and the paperwork drives the doctors nuts, but 90% of Germans are the second system, and my wife, who became uninsured when she took early retirement (don't believe the crap you were told in the primary season, Germany does NOT have single payer), had to take what they gave her from her €400 a month health insurance I have been paying for her since her retirement, sort of like a German COBRA.

The big difference is that almost anyone can sign up for the second class insurance, and they can't deny it for pre-existing conditions. Proven poverty cases can get special dispensation. The paperwork is punishing and you MUST get off your ass to get it done, or else you're uninsured here. Luckily, the top specialist, the kind of doctor who usually only treats "Privat" patients, saw my wife's biopsy results and ordered her to be given a rush time slot for surgery because he knew how aggressive her cancer was.

She went through a brutal 5 hour operation, was in the hospital for nearly three weeks, but she was caught early enough to be one of the 2% or so of cases where "the murderer" didn't have a chance to do his dirty work. In Germany, a 3 to 4 week stay at a rehab spa geared to your particular kind of cancer (they have them all over Germany) is included in the treatment, and insurance covers that, too, right down to your train trip to wherever the spa is. No politician in Germany, from the far left to the far right, would ever THINK of loosening the health care coverage here.

A politician here in Germany who would even contemplate out loud changing Germany's health care system to ours would be told "don't bother to declare your candidacy, it just ended." Most Europeans can't grasp WHY anyone in America who is not independently wealthy enough to afford any medical treatment they might ever need would EVER vote Republican, let alone Trump. When they hear stories like this one (and they're hearing a LOT of them these days), they are completely confused. They figure, if these people weren't being prevented from finding out what a Trump victory would mean for them, then why would they EVER vote for him?

The crazy answer seems to be not just that WE don't know.....but neither do they.