[Skybird]

System worked well in Germany - until the last years. It now is being hollowed out by to powerful lobbies for pharmaceutcial industry, pharmacists (both leading to very high prices for medicine), doctors. The growing costs (which now are at very high levels) have caused a slow death to the system, and due to lobbying and lacking competition it has become too expensive, which led to an effectice two-class-medicine program now. Currewntly we need to pay more and more for less and lesser services being covered by our insurances.

1. Not often I visit doctors. when I do, wait time is short.

2. Tests are being done quickly, but more and more even of vital ones are no longer covered by what insurances pay for.

3. Depends on the single man. I had good ones, and also bad ones.

4. Some hospitals are better than others. If you are with a private insurance you have better chances to have a word in which hospital you go to, which doctor will treat you, and if your room is crowded, or a single one. Normally you get send to the closest or most central one, if your house doctor arranges it. Private insurance comes at the cost of the insurance rate being raised more often. It is permitted by law to get yourself a private insurancer as long as your monthly income does not reach a certain and relatively high level. This is meant to prevent that the other insurances are left with only the poor people that pay low sums to them only.the system is more and more seriuously deformated and it is clear that it must be drastically changed, it's a major project in politics. However, both parties are effectively neutralzing each other, and the compromise is a very bad and half-hearted one, whcih additionally is put into question and is under heavy fire by more and more politicians. Lobbys are still having too much to say in it. Result: attempts of fixing the insurance rates get broken time and again, people pay more and more over the years, and service becomes worse.

One should say that as hospital doctor you are screwed. The payment is unacceptable, and (most important) working shifts can be close to 40 hours. Want to undego surgery in a life-threatening service by someone who hasn'T slept for 30 hours and is exhausted by load of work and stress? Happens here, every day, in every hospital. We currently have a growing emigration movement of highly qualified young doctors and beginners to other european countries, while especially in the East of Germany more and more areas and regions do not have a sufficient medical supply with hopuse doctors. That is a catastrophe especially for the old and ill ones.