APCR shouldnt be too bad , a slight angle and the round will bounce <| sep |> Australia too . of course . We also pay in USD . <| sep |> It ' s not entirely crazy , but just make sure you really research the health care systems in these countries first . Get opinions from expats , especially Americans and take their complaints seriously not locals , because locals don ' t know anything other than what they ' ve got . You may find a number of socialized systems not fun to deal with having some kind of autoimmune condition , others are probably fine . You were talking about TEFL in Japan and Korea , and I have absolutely no experience living in these countries , but I ' ve read specifically bad things about Japan and you could have a hard time getting the care you need if you don ' t speak Japanese . Also TEFL seems like a rather precarious way out and is not usually any kind of permanent gig so to be honest I think you ' d be better off working on your career in the US than spending 12 years in Japan doing something that will probably not help with that . Then when you ' re sick of it , you have no choice but to return to the US with not much to show for it , and it only increases the precariousness of everything . And who knows what you would be allowed with taking any extended time off for illness . I ' m a resident in Denmark for over 4 years and if I had an extended illness for which I couldn ' t work , I don ' t even know what would happen since I ' m not covered by any unemployment schemes here and my residency is tied to work I ' d likely only be able to stay , unpaid , by being dependent on my EU spouse who is employed here , at least for the moment . This is the case for virtually all people living abroad based on employment . And what other people said you can really only get out via professional work if you already were in a pretty good position in the US to have employerprovided healthcare . You ' d basically be indemand enough that you could just not take a job with anyone that didn ' t offer it to you .