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Hmm, something here seems off. I've been living in Germany for the last 5 years, I'm self employed with a wife and 2 kids, and I'm on the public plan. It seems

Hmm, something here seems off. I've been living in Germany for the last 5 years, I'm self employed with a wife and 2 kids, and I'm on the public plan. It seems great. It scales with your income so it should always be affordable. Why are you having to "pay double"? The 2nd component here is that your premium is 99% of your total health care costs. And, very little arguing with the insurance company. Much nicer to deal with than back in the US where it's rarely 100% coverage and the insurance company is trying to screw you at any opportunity. > It doesn't include even basic preventative care My public insurance includes an every 2 years skin screening from the dermatologist, and dentist checkups / teeth cleanings pretty frequently. Other preventative care, I'm not sure of. > I've also found the medical system in Germany to be atrocious when you actually go to see a doctor. If you end up in the emergency room, you can get good care. I've been sick a few times. I've gone to a family doctor and an ENT specialist and both I thought were very good. Comparable to treatment I've received in the US. It's unfortunate your experience was so bad but I don't think that is the norm. I have 2 children so we have quite a bit of experience with the German system and it seems absolutely wonderful from my perspective. One of my kids was premature and I have 0 complaints about how they handled that. She also developed a very serious medical condition a few years later. She was on chemotherapy and required multiple surgeries. I don't know how the health care for this would be in the US but the German health care system handled it great, in my opinion. We've never had to fight with the insurance company on anything except for a $7000 club foot brace which took us a few back and forth letters to get. Not so bad though.

socialist_coder 9y ago
amendment to my original reply: I thought about this more and I think your "problem" is that you are young and healthy and have no kids. You do get kind of screwed in that situation since you are basically subsidizing everyone else. But, it has to be like that otherwise health care would be prohibitively expensive for people who actually need it. If you have kids over here, you will pay the exact same price for your health insurance as you do now but it will also cover your children. At that point it will be a great deal for you =)
- Vnac 9y ago
  Yeah, as I mentioned, the calculation is a bit different when people have kids. And that's great, but for me it's unaffordable and cheaper to fly back to the US whenever I need to go to a doctor or refill prescriptions and keep insurance in the US. And that's absurd. It works pretty well though, but that may become unworkable too with the changes to the US system. By pay double, I mean that I would have to pay the employers half as well. And on top of that, most public insurance companies seem to have a minimum amount of money that they assume freelancers make, which is often above what I actually make. So health insurance would come out to be 1/3 of my income pre-tax a lot of the time. There does seem to be some preventative care for older people, but a lot of the stuff my doctors check at yearly visits in the US (basic exams, blood tests, even getting a free yearly checkup at all) doesn't seem to be covered at all if you are under a certain age. There's a lot of nice things about the US system under Obama that I took for granted. Certainly isn't perfect or better in all situations, but there are some areas where it seems significantly better than the system in Germany. So I'm always surprised when I see Americans talking about how great the German system is and treating it like an ideal. It seems like it's good in some situations, but the US system is better in many situations too. I've heard that care is quite good when people end up in a hospital (and people seem to be kept in the hospital much longer and more easily here than in the US), but from everything I've seen, it can be very hard to get any treatment until it gets that bad. May just be a bad sample set though.

socialist_coder 9y ago

amendment to my original reply: I thought about this more and I think your "problem" is that you are young and healthy and have no kids. You do get kind of screwed in that situation since you are basically subsidizing everyone else. But, it has to be like that otherwise health care would be prohibitively expensive for people who actually need it. If you have kids over here, you will pay the exact same price for your health insurance as you do now but it will also cover your children. At that point it will be a great deal for you =)

Vnac 9y ago
Yeah, as I mentioned, the calculation is a bit different when people have kids. And that's great, but for me it's unaffordable and cheaper to fly back to the US whenever I need to go to a doctor or refill prescriptions and keep insurance in the US. And that's absurd. It works pretty well though, but that may become unworkable too with the changes to the US system. By pay double, I mean that I would have to pay the employers half as well. And on top of that, most public insurance companies seem to have a minimum amount of money that they assume freelancers make, which is often above what I actually make. So health insurance would come out to be 1/3 of my income pre-tax a lot of the time. There does seem to be some preventative care for older people, but a lot of the stuff my doctors check at yearly visits in the US (basic exams, blood tests, even getting a free yearly checkup at all) doesn't seem to be covered at all if you are under a certain age. There's a lot of nice things about the US system under Obama that I took for granted. Certainly isn't perfect or better in all situations, but there are some areas where it seems significantly better than the system in Germany. So I'm always surprised when I see Americans talking about how great the German system is and treating it like an ideal. It seems like it's good in some situations, but the US system is better in many situations too. I've heard that care is quite good when people end up in a hospital (and people seem to be kept in the hospital much longer and more easily here than in the US), but from everything I've seen, it can be very hard to get any treatment until it gets that bad. May just be a bad sample set though.