this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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It's funny how Germany also has private medicine, but none of US issues...
Germany has a public option that is the basic insurance. The private insurance is something you can opt into if you wish to forego the public option.
Insurance and medicine are two different things. There are no public medical services in Germany, all practices and all doctors are private.
Maybe the issue isn't private medicine. Like you said, both have private medicine but Germany doesn't have the same issues as the US. One difference is public insurance. I know there is Medicare, but that's only for older folks.
The difference, from what I can see across the pond, is that the medical industry in the US is a government supported cartel. No one can get into the industry to create competition and existing players can do whatever they want. The US government created a lot of regulations to prevent anyone joining the industry and completely deregulated day to day operations for established players.
Do you have do any examples of these regulations that exist in the US but not in Germany or other countries with better access to healthcare?
In terms of insurance, are you saying that Germany actually has more competition in that space compared to on the US side?
Competition can help lower prices with things like collective bargaining. It's the reason that Canada pays less for drugs, because they can negotiate prices on behalf of the whole country. However, the US has more competition and several private insurance companies, each are only able to negotiate on behalf of their relatively small groups and thus are not able to negotiate as good of prices.
Many countries outside of the US provide better access to healthcare for less and I'm not convinced it is because those systems have better competition in the ways you are suggesting, but I'd be happy to learn more.