Minnesota Health Care Experts to Study German Health Care System

insurance news network ^ | 9-08-10 | Targeted News Service

[WOBBLY BOB]

With comprehensive health reform signed into law by President Obama a little less than six months ago, a high-ranking delegation of health care experts from Minnesota and Washington, D.C. will meet in Berlin, Sept. 14-20, for a seminar on health care policy that compares the U.S. and German systems.

This is the second consecutive year that the University of Minnesota's Center for German and European Studies has organized this trip. This year's focus is on health insurance. The new legislation calls for the creation of state-based health insurance exchanges and Minnesota is positioning itself to maintain its national leadership role by creating an exchange well before the 2014 deadline.

[WOBBLY BOB]

Current American Healthcare 61% better than German

http://www.aerzteblatt.de/v4/archiv/pdf.asp?id=77145

If You Believe America Has Lousy Health Care, Here's Why--

Garbage in, garbage out.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/06/29/if_you_believe_america_has_lousy_health_care,_heres_why

[conservative cat]

I don’t think that the German system is *that* bad, but you can bet you pay if you are a non-citizen. It isn’t free. They also give their citizens priority to get into med schools (we give a lot of our med school and other university slots to wealthy, foreign born students, who take their skills back home- then we claim a shortage and have to import non-English speaking doctors from who knows what med-school) and help them pay for it. The doctors don’t make as much, as they don’t come out of school in debt and there isn’t the shortage we have.

[EGPWS]

Where could one find a better role model to slide into a socialized health system than Minnesota?

[Red_Devil 232]

They must have liked the beer on their trip last year.

[WOBBLY BOB]

Not only does it not work in the UK and Canaduh, it won’t work in other universes.The legacy of Britain’s socialized medical system is a growing reliance on foreign doctors.( like seven of the eight suspects arrested in the failed London car bombing and Glasgow airport attack. )

[WOBBLY BOB]

It is a harsh turnabout of National Socialism that Hitler’s killing of society’s weakest will be implemented by America’s ‘first Black President’.

[MuttTheHoople]

Arbeit Macht Frei

[Brilliant]

This is the primary determinant of the cost of healthcare, assuming we’re comparing apples to apples:

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/276540-poster594x420mm_eng.jpg

[pepsionice]

I lived in Germany for fifteen years. Some observations.

First, it’s built on “fairness”...everyone pays the same percentage (no free rides unless you are unemployed). Whatever you pay, your employer pays the same amount.

Second, you have a list of medical procedures authorized and a maximum cost authorized. No matter where you go in Germany...it’s the same cost (Berlin cost is the same as a small village of 300 folks).

Third, Doctors, nurses, and hospitals have a rate of income or profit. Hospitals don’t modernize that much because they don’t make the profit to do that. Doctors are underpaid (by American standards), so they tend to look for employment outside of the country....and leave (Australia, US, Canada). Nurses are unhappy with their set pay scale, so they leave. You have to bring in third-world doctors and nurses....to make things work.

Fourth, drugs are typically prescribed with generic drugs listed as first. Drug companies are not making much of a profit with this system...so they don’t care much for development.

Fifth, if you go into a hospital...you typically get a four to six person room. This means your 10-day stay might be with a guy who has terminal cancer and is yelling hourly about his ‘pains’, and you just sit there and keep counting the hours before they will allow you to leave.

Sixth, the percentage of pay into it? It was supposed to be maxed out (even the gov’t agreed on that). So a year later, they’v creaed these fees ($24 a month on top of your percentage that you already paid). Within ten years, it’s likely to be $35 a month, on top of the percentage.

I could go on and on. The German system isn’t a failure....but it’s really much of a success.

I will offer this analysis after standing in a German waiting room though. If we simply added nurse-practitioners into the mix and forced folks with very routine problems to be seen by them, and then limit the ratio of doctors into this whole game-plan....we’d probably cut the cost of care by thirty percent. If we created an independent court system for any malpractice legal case, and set limits on what lawyers can charge or get out of this, then we’d cut another twenty percent of cost.

[CynicalBear]

Minnesota also elected a Muslim to represent them in Washington. Not sure I place too much faith in them to lead in anything.

[Caipirabob]

Of course they do!

Just not the year you expected:

Nazi propaganda for their compulsory "euthanasia" program:

"This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too."

They also implemented a number of "positive" eugenics policies, giving awards to "Aryan" women who had large numbers of children and encouraged a service in which "racially pure" single women could deliver illegitimate children. Allegations that such women were also impregnated by SS officers in the Lebensborn are common, but unproven.

Sourced from www.martinfrost.ws

[grey_whiskers]

Paging Dr. Mengele...

[editor-surveyor]

> “Current American Healthcare 61% better than German”

.
Utter B.S.

The German system is turning toward real healthcare, rather than drugs, surgery and death.

It is working well; that is the reason for the attacks.

The FDA will not allow Minnesota to consider anything that produces cures at low cost like the German approach.
.

[editor-surveyor]

> “Where could one find a better role model to slide into a socialized health system than Minnesota?”

.
Its not the socialized element that will be attacked; its the cures that the FDA will not allow.
.

[conservative cat]

Agreed. There is no way the German healthcare system will be allowed. This is a government boondoggle by MN. My daughter was seen by a German doctor (I paid, since we weren't citizens) on a visit. He spent 20 minutes manually cleaning out her ear tubes and explaining it to me. Then, he prescribed a $10 (with no insurance) herbal decongestant.

[Waco]

In the 80’s a guy here told me of taking a tour of Europe. He said the guide in Germany said ‘’we have Drs. and Lawyers moonlighting, driveing cabs. I doubt if it’s improved any.

[avid]

Not entirely true.

Your third point:
I guess they make less than in the US but I’ve never seen 3rd world doctors or nurses. Doctors don’t make that much from the “socially” insured but more from the privately insured which they give extra treatments (privately insured include all policemen and other officials).

Your fourth point:
That’s the case in the Netherlands but unfortunately not in Germany. Drug companies make a huge amount in Germany. This is something that really has to change.

Your fifth point:
True, but you can “upgrade” your social insurance privately (”Zusatzversicherung”) to get a single or two bed room with preferential care and other “add-ons” like biannual free check-ups with blodd analysis and all that. Costs for that are miniscule like 8 € a month. Same goes for dentist stuff, which will get you premium treatment and e.g. free professional tooth cleaning twice a year (around 18 €/month). Other upgrades are for people who need glasses...

The German system is not that bad. If you buy some of that upgrade packages, you are pretty well set with first class treatment. I like it more than the American system. If I read e.g. that someone in the U.S. goes to the dentist and gets a $1000 bill or two weeks in a hospital cost $50000 - no thanks.

[avid]

Total nonsense. Doctors here make good money. None of them has a second job. Lawyer on the other hand...if your not a good one or in a law firm, it’s tough from what I have heard from friends :).