Comment by groundzeros2015
10 hours ago
US consumers also have high standards for healthcare.
I interact with a lot of engineers moving from Europe and US and it’s never how US politics portray it. German friends talk about paying for private insurance because the public one is so bad.
How do you define good/bad? People mostly seem to talk about wait time for socialized health care, but where we live in US there's plenty of specialists that you gotta book months ahead of time. When my mom needed a pacemaker it was a 4 month process. My wife's OBGYN is booked a year out - god help you if you miss an appointment. Anyone working in pediatrics look like zombies.
Urgent care clinics have been big in our region. The primary system is obviously overloaded, and 2 of these have popped up in the last 3 years. It's more expensive per visit than our primary physician, but cheaper than an ER visit, which could easily take half a day anyways.
What you’re describing is that in response to a resource being rationed you are able to use money to raise its urgency at your will. That seems like a powerful option to have when your health is on the line (that I acknowledge is not available to everyone).
I don’t have metrics for good/bad. I’m just going off of them telling me it’s bad.
To be clear, that's in the US where we have private health care thus it generally isn't rationed provided you're willing to pay. However what we have is a guild system that in effect tightly constrains the total supply. Depending on the state one of the ways that urgent care commonly gets around this is with ever controversial nurse practitioners. Which is to say that quite a few state legislatures appear to be pushing back against the guild.
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Complaining about the service quality for public health insurance customers in Germany is pretty much the definition of "first world problem" though. FWIW I never switched over to private insurance even though my income would allow it, also once you get above a certain age you can't switch back and that's when the private insurers really start to rip you off ;)
And despite that they are willing to pay, because if you are out of poverty your health is a high priority!
So yes, Americans love consuming healthcare. Is there any category they aren’t a high consumer of? You can’t measure efficiency only looking at the input side.
I think the main reason why high income Germans switch to private health insurance is less about service quality, but because they may actually pay less than public insurance (at least until they get near pension age). Can't talk for US citizens of course.
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