healthcare: I pay $750 US annually to insure my wife and daughter fully, with access to the best clinics etc. A good plan, especially for a poor, developing nation. And healthcare in general is not too bad really. My appts for my daughter (9mos old) are 400 pesos, and this is at a very modern, hip and cutting edge kind of place. My daughter was born at UCE, and I was able to participate in the birth. All natural. COst me only $1200 US (this was before I found out about available insurance plans--dont have the name of the company, sorry, with me, but I can find out for you. Everyone down there knows it is the single best option.)
Residency: went through that last year. My Spanish is fluent,a nd my knowledge of the country pretty deep, but even I was a bit flummoxed from time to time by the bureaucratic paperwork. still I didnt spend as much as everyone else. You can go to a lawyer and spend about 20,000 pesos to have them do it,, which is probably easiest, or you can learn first hand how things work, save a bit of money, lose a bit of time, but there are advantages to this baphometic initiation. You willl learn alot about the country and its workings, and knowledge is one of your most important weapons if you mean to survive here. It is not anything like a developednation. Anyway, $1500 is way too much, ridiculous . You operate in this manner here, and you will always be a pendejo, someone to be taken advantage of. You will have lost before you are even out the gate. This is a tough place for gringos to make it; the culture is just too different. You need to learn how to think like a dominican.
Employment/financial ops: tough. You cant make any money working for others. Forget it. DR's greatest resource is its cheap andplentiful labor. Forget teaching english, etc. Pay is miserable. You have to come up with good business ideas that will survive a very tough inflationary environment (with a badly devalued peso, a terrible mix). Almost all the gringos I knew four years ago here to invest money have lost out and moved on. Study the environment, think like a dominican. What services can you provide that the average dominican can afford and wants? There are in fact many but you need to think carefully. One advantage: you dont need much to start up if you think along these lines, so you dont lose much either if things go bad. However, I would strongly advise thatyou maintain some financial link to currencies/economies outside the DR in order to ensure that you are not overly dependent on the vagaries of the DR economy---vagaries which are NOT merely temporary but the very essence of its entire history. Study the history and you will know the country for what it truly is.
