I lived under this system for 2 years and it was awesome. The lack of paperwork alone was...eye opening. The speed of service was astonishing. All you need is your insurance card (we used Die Teckniker) and you can see most doctors. And the doctors will just do the tests on you themselves, during the visit.
The American system generates a tremendous amount of administrative work, and reduces the quality of care. If you've ever been in a doctors office, or a hospital in the US, they are constantly looking at the paperwork, not at you. Totally different in Germany. (Which was weird because in virtually every other respect Germans seem to love paperwork!)
Like a fish that doesn't know what water feels like, it dawned on me how stressful all that paperwork is, and how much worse it makes you feel, when you are already feeling bad. And of course in the US any contact at all with the healthcare system is not just painful now, it could be painful for years.
The reason we don't change is because people don't know or believe it could be better. And that, in turn, is because some of that huge money flowing through the healthcare system pays the salaries of professional sophists and lawyers who are very good at playing on the intellectual weaknesses of an American audience. They have lots of tools, but the two most effective seem to be an appeal to "American exceptionalism" - if we didn't invent it then its not good - and the classic strawman attack that anything that isn't the current system is communism. A foolish claim that has no merit, not least of which because none of those same people would assert that Germany is communist.
It's a very sad state of affairs. The US is like a mean old grannie being robbed by a handsome and clever son-in-law who plays on her prejudices and ignorance. Even when other family members try to warn her, NO, she snaps, he tells me you are the monsters, and he is handsome and clever and better than you! There is a villain here, but it's hard to have much sympathy for the victim, either.
Comments
I lived under this system for 2 years and it was awesome. The lack of paperwork alone was...eye opening. The speed of service was astonishing. All you need is your insurance card (we used Die Teckniker) and you can see most doctors. And the doctors will just do the tests on you themselves, during the visit.
The American system generates a tremendous amount of administrative work, and reduces the quality of care. If you've ever been in a doctors office, or a hospital in the US, they are constantly looking at the paperwork, not at you. Totally different in Germany. (Which was weird because in virtually every other respect Germans seem to love paperwork!)
Like a fish that doesn't know what water feels like, it dawned on me how stressful all that paperwork is, and how much worse it makes you feel, when you are already feeling bad. And of course in the US any contact at all with the healthcare system is not just painful now, it could be painful for years.
The reason we don't change is because people don't know or believe it could be better. And that, in turn, is because some of that huge money flowing through the healthcare system pays the salaries of professional sophists and lawyers who are very good at playing on the intellectual weaknesses of an American audience. They have lots of tools, but the two most effective seem to be an appeal to "American exceptionalism" - if we didn't invent it then its not good - and the classic strawman attack that anything that isn't the current system is communism. A foolish claim that has no merit, not least of which because none of those same people would assert that Germany is communist.
It's a very sad state of affairs. The US is like a mean old grannie being robbed by a handsome and clever son-in-law who plays on her prejudices and ignorance. Even when other family members try to warn her, NO, she snaps, he tells me you are the monsters, and he is handsome and clever and better than you! There is a villain here, but it's hard to have much sympathy for the victim, either.