Per insured person. So how this worked was that you couldn't just open shop wherever you pleased as a dentist but needed to get a "place". Basic calculation wa

Per insured person. So how this worked was that you couldn't just open shop wherever you pleased as a dentist but needed to get a "place". Basic calculation was: we need one dentist per x-people in an area to make sure everyone has access to one. So, as a dentist, you would try to get a slot or probably just take over an existing practice. I will simplify it a bit but basically there is x-people paying insurance (health insurance is mandatory for nearly everyone) and we calculate how much it costs on average to provide health care for for one insured person (children are mostly insured under their parents so it is more like per family than person) and with that you allocate a budget on what to pay the dentist. So basically if you were a dentists and you patients rarely ever needed to visit you, you were golden. You were incentivized for keeping them healthy. Sure you might get unlucky and get lot's of patients with very complicated problems but on average it would even out. Again, I simplified it a lot and am no experts and there have been multiple health care reforms through the years, (actually 2004 is when the new system started) but that is the gist of it. The health care system has extremely eroded over the years here in Germany. People wait months to see a specialist and life saving operations are postponed constantly. We are on the brink of collapse and that was before covid hit. All because certain politician were sold on the idea that health care should be run like a business.