United States | News & Politics

There problem in Germany extends beyond health insurance.

We have a serious lack of medical professionals. I recently went to the dermatologist and from when I booked my visit first l until my issue was treated was about three months. Mind you this was a private doctor's office that doesn't work with public health insurance at all and I took this one because it was the quickest in the general area. My family doctor doesn't take new patients as far as I'm aware. And yet, we put a hard limit on students for medicine - current NC is at 1.0. These are grades that were extremely rare back in my day.

In addition to that, the terms for doctors for public health insurance are... not great. You're basically disincentivized to do it.

In addition, public health insurance is currently underfunded for reasons I'm not going into. But private health insurance also existed back when public health insurance made money (https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/219867/umfrage/ueberschuss-und-defizit-der-gesetzlichen-krankenkassen-seit-2000/), so this can't be the sole cause.

I think the best choice would be for the state to provide healthcare itself and have the cost be covered by tax; any additional services can be covered by private health insurance. Technically, this model already exists for soldiers in active service.

And if you do want to leave, perhaps because the cost is getting too much on account of developing serious issues that allow the insurance to charge serious premiums,

Private health insurance can't increase your premiums because of issues you developed during insurance as far as I know. They can only perform an evaluation when you switch plans or the provider: https://www.privat-patienten.de/beitraege/steigt-mein-pkv-beitrag-wenn-ich-schwer-erkranke/ otherwise, everyone in a group gets the same rate hikes, with the group being determined by age, plan and I think gender.

It's not like private health insurance is free from increaseing rates (I got about 10% this year...) it's true that the system is heavily flawed, but it's still far away from how it is in the US.