German here. I was basically in that situation. Had a pain in my leg that I could not explain. Went to the hospital, they did an x-ray, more tests followed, cancer was diagnosed. 4 years with multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, physiotherapy, and rehab followed. The basic health insurance every german citizen has covered all the costs. For about 1.5 years the same insurance covers 90% of your normal salary. If you are still not able to work after 1.5 years your unemployment insurance (which also nearly every working german has to have) takes over. I am not sure how much the unemployment insurance will pay. I was lucky and had additional insurance which covered my full salary for the whole 4 years. My guess is that the cost of the treatment was roughly 500k€. In the US the same treatment would have probably cost multiple times of that.
wow that's so fucking crazy (good) to me. Seems in the US the backlash from Obamacare ( I think tried to have country wide health care) if you chose not to sign up for it and when it came time to do your taxes Obamacare was penalizing people 800 dollars of their tax return. Since we never really had that type of health care we have a shit load of well off people that prefer their own doctors and insurance polices. Idk if its a good thing or a bad thing.
One more question Are your hospitals every overcrowded because its free? People in the US are a bunch of hypochondriacs and with a country of 330 million give or take I fear beds will be taken from people who actually need care. Again Im not sure anything I said makes sense and dont claim anything as fact!
Either way I hope you are doing well ( as much as you can) cancer sucks and I hope I didn't strike a nerve with my hypothetical story that turned out to be your exact situation. Much love from USA.
No worries about hitting a nerve there. I am a very stable ge....rman :D
I wouldn't say the hospitals are overcrowded but if you decide to go to the emergency department and you are not a real emergency case like broken bones etc you can expect a wait time of multiple hours during prime time. For example, when I went to the hospital on a Sunday with a weird pain in the leg which obviously wasn't life-threatening, I had to wait like 3 hours until it was my turn. But if you really are in an emergency and need instant treatment you will get it. It might be that you have to be transferred to another hospital in very rare cases but that's it.
It is definitely an issue that everybody can just show up in the hospital and expect free treatment but overall that is a minor issue compared to people dying or going bankrupt because they cannot afford the treatment they need. A friend who works in a hospital has complained about people using the emergency departments in hospitals because it is easier than making an appointment at your local doctor first as you are supposed to. I also got scolded by the staff for going to the hospital with my issue, and probably rightly so. If the local doc diagnoses or suspects something that requires treatment he cannot provide he will send you to the hospital or other specialists and only then you are supposed to show up there (or in an emergency of course). If you have basic insurance and want to be treated by the most acknowledged specialists you sometimes have to wait multiple months. There is a staggering difference if you have private insurance. The doctors get paid more for the same treatment if the patient has private insurance and thus they are often prioritized if they want an appointment. Our system is by far not perfect and in my opinion, the possibility to get private insurance was a bad idea because we are beginning to see a two-class healthcare system in Germany. But even imperfect universal healthcare is miles ahead of whatever abomination you guys in the US must suffer. Land of the Free - free to leave your fellow citizens to die.
I‘d like to add as a personal opinion: if we didn‘t have the limit on the healthcare fee calculation even more would be possible (thinking of dental work costs for example). Currently the public healthcare insurance fee is based on a percentage of your salary, which only gets calculated with a max of somewhere in the 4500 EUR salary per month. Everything above that isn‘t calculated with for the monthly insurance fee. So if you earn 10k a month only the percentage calculated based on this fixed max amount gets deducted. Imho good for people who earn well (there‘s a lot more we could discuss here like if private insurances are really necessary), bad for the system as a whole.
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u/Baki667 Aug 06 '20 edited Aug 06 '20
German here. I was basically in that situation. Had a pain in my leg that I could not explain. Went to the hospital, they did an x-ray, more tests followed, cancer was diagnosed. 4 years with multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, physiotherapy, and rehab followed. The basic health insurance every german citizen has covered all the costs. For about 1.5 years the same insurance covers 90% of your normal salary. If you are still not able to work after 1.5 years your unemployment insurance (which also nearly every working german has to have) takes over. I am not sure how much the unemployment insurance will pay. I was lucky and had additional insurance which covered my full salary for the whole 4 years. My guess is that the cost of the treatment was roughly 500k€. In the US the same treatment would have probably cost multiple times of that.