I am so confused!

what I understand is that according to "the man" if hubby and I are to join ths SSN, we will be expected to pay 7.5% (or 7?) of our annual worldwide income...and this will be calculated based on out tax return or something equivalent.

however, currently I am working full-time and hubby's income is off the books. nonetheless, 7-7.5% is a lot of money (not compared to US heath insurance, I know..right now with employer contribution I pay $250+/month!) and more than I expected. If things go the way they seem to have for others here, we'll be paying more around $800 for the year (for the two of us)

okay...so that said, once we are in Italy, I will not even be working for a while, and both of us will probably just be working part-time, low pay...we will be on student visas and living on savings for a while. it doesn't seems fair that we would possibly have to pay based on the income that I used to make. any insights?

one more...we'll have a 6 month old with us...will be have to pay for her to join the SSN, or is she automatically covered?

IIRC there is a student rate if you're on a student visa. It's 1/2 the basic rate. I think. Not much more then 200 Euros for the year. I don't know if this would count for families or if it's just for the student. Do a search for student health care. I'm fairly sure this was discussed last year.

It's 7.5% of the first amount of income [20? or 30K I think] then 4% for the rest. I'm not sure but I think this is then tax deductable at least in Italy.

In the USA you are also paying 6.2% of approximately the 1st $100,000 for SS (retirement) and 1.45% of all earned income for Medicare (health insurance). Listen to Nick as he seems to have great in these matters.

I believe that, if you are students with the appropriate Permesso di Soggiorno, you will be able to apply for the "tessera sanitaria" - the health card, which allows you access to the system - at the cost of €149.772501 a testa (give or take a few hundredths of a centesimo ).

I found this in several places on the web:

University of Bologna

Stranieri in Italia website

It appears that this is one of the fees that was set by law previous to the Euro changover, and was originally denominated in Lire, so they charge the new fee based upon the official conversion rate of lire to euro.

The old cost was 290000 lire, which (at 1936.27 lire to the €) comes out to €149.772501

I'm pretty confident in this figure, although I find the various SSN and ASL websites totally bewildering, so I've not yet found the figure on an official site.

HTH.

comune.firenze

That's from the Comune of Firenze.

Calendar year 149.77 for single

387.34 for a family.

oh wow thanks! that link is great, and answered a few of my other questions too. ya'll are the best