
Could it be because you're British, Phill, and living in Germany?
While the EC working rules are more liberal than what we have in
the 1989 US-Canada FTA, there's probably a law about that (having
health insurance coverage is a condition of my being down here,
for example).

You have mentioned this once before, yet both the NY Times profile on
the German sickness funds (late Jan.) and pamphlets that my girlfriend
gives to her language students from the German consulate both say that
it is "voluntary" (okay, there were quotation marks (-;) and that only
90% of the population is covered by the sickness funds (analogous to
our provincial health insurances, but not divided by province/state).

Another guy in health care policy says that the Turkish guest workers
aren't covered ... he's written to me a couple of times (he's not a
post-er).  I'll ask him ...

gld