Reader in Germany comments on Barry’s column
I read [Barry’s] latest column with the comment on health care in the US. Don’t think it’s much different here in Europe, especially in Germany. We almost have the same problems, the costs are rising astronomically. Almost every 3 months there is a reform to put a stop to it, it’s quite the contrary.
Our system is a pretty complicated to explain and was established in the late 19th century. Some of the regulations were never revised to the modern times. Basically it used to be that both the employee and employer paid 7% of your monthly earnings into the system. Now it’s about 14.5% for the employee compared to 8% for the employer.
One problem is the lobbyists of big pharmaceutical companies that dictate the prices on medication to the health insurances. The second is that once you work and have health insurance, your immediate family is covered under your insurance regardless where they live. We have lots of immigrants whose family still live in their original countries. If that country has a social agreement with Germany, guess who pays their health bills? There is a huge “black market” with the insurance cards and according to each health insurance, “they can’t check on every person if such or such is really their family member.”
However, they can pay their bosses millions of dollars in bonuses. So you see things are not that much different over here, except that while other Europeans demonstrate and scare their politicians, Germans don’t do that. Like my husband used to say: “Germans are like sheep, they gladly go to the slaughter house before even thinking about demonstrating.”
Regards,
Marion Marek