American reacts to German Healthcare System Explained

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[tosa]

If a woman has to stay in hospital during childbirth, the €10 per day fee does not apply because pregnancy is not an illness.

[Archkxs]

Every American seeing this: "oh thats great. why don't we have that here"

Americans when a government tries to implement such a system: "COMMUNISM"

[mats]

The most important thing is..
If you lose your job you do NOT lose your health insurance!
The social welfare office will pay it for you until you find a new job!

[Perseus]

The 10 €/day at the hospital are to cover your meals.

[zockerdude]

One interesting fact to add: you can do public health care + get some extras from private insurance companies. This is possible for anyone who's able and willing to afford the extra.

[Schirm]

As a self-employed person in Germany, you can either stay in the public health insurance (GKV) or sign up for it if you’re just starting out. The premiums are based on your income, so you have to submit proof of income every year. That means your payments can change regularly, and you’ll often have to make back payments if you earned more than you estimated. On the flip side, if you made less, you’ll get some of the money back.

Private health insurance (PKV) works differently because the premiums aren’t tied to your yearly income. That’s why a lot of self-employed folks go for it—it offers more predictable payments. You can also set up age reserves to make sure the costs stay manageable when you’re older. Just keep in mind that switching back from private to public insurance can be tricky, so it’s a decision worth thinking through.

[EyMannMachHin]

Love how he totally nailed the pronunciation of "Lohnnebenkosten" 💙

[mibbio]

Some things that were missing in the video:
- costs for calling an ambulance and transportation to the hospital are capped at 10€ (but you might have to pay the full costs if the ambulance was not neccessary)
- all additional payments (10€ per medication, 10€ per day in hospital, 10€ per ambulance, ...) in a year combined are capped to 2% of your yearly income and is reduced to 1% if you are chronically ill
- you can pay that cap in advance for the next year so you don't have to care about any individual payments for that year and if you don't hit that cap in that year you get the remaining money back

[ProfTydrim]

The big difference between the german private insurance and the american system, is that the government will still limit the prices for procedures and drugs the companies can charge, even if it's private insuarance. That's why even uninsured people (of which there theoretically shouldn't be any in germany, since having insurance is mandatory) wouldn't go bancrupt from medical bills.

Regarding your question wether you have to do this if you're self employed: No. You can get statutory insurance, but if you meet the criteria, you can opt out of that and get private instead. This can make sense for self-emplyed people because - as your own employer - you'd have to pay both halfs of the statutoray payment (the employees as well as the employers part). Once you opt for private tho, you can't go back to statutory. This is to prevent people from switching back when they get older and need more treatment and taking advantage of a system they didn't pay into when they were healthy.

[haraberu]

But the most important thing, they pay for a lot of checkups. They cover annual screenings for ovarian, breast, prostate and skin cancer (depending on patient's age and gender-phenotype). These kind of checkups pay for themselves because treating early-stage cancer is orders of magnitude cheaper than treating late-stage cancer or palliative care for terminal cancer.

[elizabethbathory]

We had leukemia twice in my family. That rings up to over 1mio € in medical bills. I think over the years we've paid maybe about 2000€ in hospital bills and medication. In the US we would never recover from this, here we live a great life. Received sickness compensation the whole time. My craziest memory regarding costs was a visit to the pharmacy to pick up meds. I paid the 10€ fee and the pharmacist said "don't loose that one, we only had the most expensive option available, you're carrying 11, 000€"
Also funny: our kid was in hospital for a night (not leukemia, he's fine) and I was outraged when we received a bill (I think it was around 17€) for the accompanying(?) adult 😅 - hospital stay for the kid is free but the parent has to pay for the night.

[Gandorhar]

I may be misstaken but it seemed to me that you missunderstood the part about companies being able to turn you away, he was talking about the private ones, and public ones cant turn you away .

[madrooky]

The statement that you have to wait for months for EVERYTHING health-related is pure nonsense. There are some specialists who are rare, and in these particular cases, it may be true. However, if you need to see a general practitioner, you often don't even need an appointment; you can simply go there and wait. Alternatively, you can call and ask for an appointment, which can often be scheduled for the same day or within a week at most. Especially if there is urgency in your case, nobody lets you die or endure pain. In cases of emergency, you simply call an ambulance. They even say, "Call the ambulance when in doubt; better safe than sorry" (or dead).

Additionally, if you have a low income, there is a maximum amount you have to pay in fees, depending on your income level. Once you have paid a certain threshold, you can apply for an exemption with your health insurance, and by law, they cannot deny this, making it a straightforward process as well. This is on a yearly basis, so just collect the bills and hand them in to your insurance with the application and you are done with extra payments for the rest of the year. You get a card from the insurance you can show when anyone asks for extra payment.

Also, there was for a while this 10€ "Selbstbeteiligung" for a while when seeing a doctor, but they removed that again because administration of that fee was more expensive then what it returned.

[nettcologne]

In 1883, Bismarck ( German Chancellor) created the world's first social universal health system with the Health Insurance Act. This was later adopted by the USA, some Asian and numerous European countries, except of course the British. All countries, except the British with their now broken system, have adapted it to their respective social systems over the years. In the late 1950s, the United States moved away from universal health care and turned it into the system that exists in the USA today.

[klamin_original]

One thing the video left out:
You can have public health insurance and get additional private insurance for example for hospital related things like being eligible for a single bed room, having the right to be treated and talked to by the chief physician rather than some physician and some other things. Also they cover parts of the dental treatments that are not fully covered by the public health insurance. Additional private insurance comes at a very low cost of 20-50€ depending on your age. But it's worth it sometimes.

[exael]

Have I missed something or was the Beitragsbemessungsgrenze (income threshold) not mentioned at all?
The 7.3% and your half of the additional contribution only have to be paid up to the income threshold, currently 62, 100 euros/year. For every euro you earn more, you do not pay a health insurance fee.

[Falzelo]

We had a complicated child birth in the Netherlands. On paper the total cost is 150, 000 per child, x2 because we had twin. Completely covered by insurance

[theworkshopwhisperer.]

How to blow an american mind in two words. proportional taxation.

[grieveromega]

5:06 - I wouldn't say "company" here, because that implies that it is depending from your employer. But instead the Zusatzbeitrag ("additional fee") is decided by the health insurance provider, which you should compare against each other.

[keitheabosmeri]

I'm a nurse in the german health care system. And I think the main reason to chose private insurance is that you are treated better than the others. A hospital can make 3 times more money with people of private insurances. There are seperate wards for private insurance patients. You get better food, there are more nurses for the same amount of patients BUT you will be treated different by the doctors. They will do everything to make money with you. That's the price. But you will get medical treatment earlier than the others and you can eat salmon while being in hospital for example.