Health insurance in Germany

There are, broadly speaking, three types of health insurance available in Germany:

• Public (also known as “statutory”) health insurance
• Private health insurance
• Travel/expat health insurance

All German long-term residents must have comprehensive = public or private health insurance. Travel/expat insurance does not suffice (see §193 of the Versicherungsvertragsgesetz).

90% of the residents in Germany have public health insurance, 10% have private health insurance.

In general: Public health insurance is easy to get for most people, affordable, it covers everything you need, there are no deductibles and nearly no co-payments, and should be the default option for most situations.

Advice for specific situations:

• You are applying for a visa at a German embassy: Since you are applying from abroad, you might not be able to get public or private health insurance. The only possible route is to get travel/expat insurance and switch to proper health insurance once you are in Germany.
• You have a job with a monthly gross income between 520€ and 5,550€: You automatically have public health insurance. Your employer will deduct about 8.5% of your gross income from your paycheck and give it to the health insurer.
• You have a job with an income above ~5,550€: You can choose between public insurance or private insurance. If you choose public, then your premiums are capped at around 350 € per month (essentially, you pay the aforementioned 8.5% on your salary only up to the Beitragsbemessunggrenze, which is around 58k per year). If you choose private insurance, then your premiums depend on your age and how much coverage you get, and your employer will pay half of it, up to the maximum they would have paid in the public system (around 350 € per month).
• You’re a student from an EU country: If you remain enrolled in the health insurance of your home country then you can use that health insurance during your studies in Germany. Be sure to get a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) from your home insurer, this will work as your insurance card in Germany. The German rules regarding co-payments and coverage apply (see below), not the rules of your home insurer. Note that the EHIC card is explicitly designed for temporary stays in another EU country, and only covers those procedures which cannot wait until you return to your home country. Students using an EHIC card can find that some non-urgent procedures are not covered.
• You’re a student, you are from outside the EU and younger than 30: You can get public health insurance (including long-term care insurance) for about 100€ per month, starting with the first day of your study. If you arrive prior to that date in Germany, you can get travel/expat insurance for this short time.
• Children: If you have public health insurance, your children are covered at no additional cost until their 25th birthday or until they have a job. If you have private health insurance, then you will need to buy additional private health insurance for them, the costs of which vary depending on how much coverage you want, but are around 200 € per month and child.
• Spouses: If you have public health insurance and your spouse has no or very low (below around 450 € / month) income, then your spouse is covered at no additional cost. If you have private insurance, then your spouse is not covered, and he/she will have to get their own insurance.
• You get unemployment/welfare benefits from the German government: You get public insurance for free.
• You are self-employed: For most freelancers (with the exception of artists, performers, publicists, writers, editors and journalists), you can choose whether to take public or private health insurance. However, you can only get public health insurance if you had public health insurance (in Germany or another country) in the past.
• Everyone else: You have to get private insurance.

Public health insurance

What is covered?

Public insurance covers all necessary treatments for all diseases, including for pre-existing conditions. You can visit as many doctors as you want, as often as you want. Emergency room and hospitalization are also covered.

• Dental care: All medically necessary treatments are fully covered, although you may have to pay out of pocket (or get additional insurance) for “cosmetically superior” treatments (such as fillings which match the colour of your teeth exactly).
• Psychotherapy: covered
• Ambulance to the hospital: covered
• Lifestyle drugs against hair loss, for weight loss, or against erection loss: not covered
• Preventive services like screenings, immunizations, regular check-ups: covered
• Eyeglasses: Always covered for children and minors under 18 years old. Covered for adults if you need more than 6 diopters. Also covered if you have astigmatism and need more than 4 diopters. Only basic lenses are covered. You must pay for the frames yourself, but some stores include them for free.
• Drugs: prescription drugs are covered, over-the-counter drugs are not covered (except for serious illnesses). Many drugs that are over the counter in other countries are prescription drugs in Germany.
• Convalescent therapy/cures: Covered
• Birth control pills/coil: covered for women under the age of 20
• Hormone replacement therapy: Covered for trans people
• Abortion: Is covered if the mother’s health is at risk, or if the mother can’t afford it (income below 1,000 Euro), or after a rape.
• Sterilization: Covered for medical reasons (e.g. uterus cancer), not for birth control reasons
• Artificial insemination: Covered three times, but with a 50% co-payment
• Illness benefits: When you are ill, your employer will continue to pay 100% of your salary for the first 6 weeks. After that, the public health insurance will pay illness benefits for the following 18 months (70% of your net income).
• Child illness benefits: If your child gets ill and you have to take care of your child, the parents can take up to 10 paid child sick days per year per child under the age of 12

What about deductibles and co-payments?###

• Deductibles: None. The insurance pays from the very beginning.
• Lifetime cap: None. The insurance pays till the very end.
• Upfront payment: None. The doctor/hospital sends their bill directly to the insurer.
• Pre-approval: is not necessary

Co-payments

There are no co-payments for minors under 18 years. The co-payments for adults:

• Seeing a doctor in their office: free
• Emergency room: free
• Hospital stay: 10 € per day for the first 28 days per calendar year, free after that
• Ambulance ride: 10 €
• Prescription drugs and prescribed medical aids (e.g. wheelchair, hearing aid): Between 5 and 10 euro per prescription.
• Additional dental co-payments: Nothing if you earn less than 1,190 euro per month. If you earn more: 50% for tooth implants and permanent dentures. If you go to a dentist every year for 5 years your co-payment drops to 40%, after 10 years to 35%.

All regular co-payments by you and your spouse combined in one year cannot exceed 2% of your combined gross income in that year. If you have a chronic illness, the cap is 1%.

How to visit a doctor or emergency room

You can visit as many different general practitioners and specialists as you want, as often as you want. You should call the doctor’s office and ask for an appointment. The receptionist will usually ask you roughly what you’re calling about, so that they can determine how urgent your need is. Sometimes patients also just show up at the doctor’s office to slip in between appointments - in particular, most GPs take walk-in patients (but you may have to wait a while, depending on how severe your condition is). According to a study 63 % of adults in Germany can see a doctor the same day or the next day.

It’s not necessary to see a generalist (GP) before seeing a specialist, although getting a referral from your GP can make getting an appointment with a specialist easier. Unless you’re fairly certain of your diagnosis, visiting a GP first is often a good idea, as they can discuss more general treatment options with you. But you can also call specialists directly or get an appointment online or by calling 116 117.

Many people have a GP they initially go to for most common issues (their Hausarzt), and over time this GP builds up a fairly complete picture of their patient’s medical history. However, unlike in other countries, it’s not necessary to “register” your Hausarzt with your insurance, and you can obviously switch and see a different GP whenever you like - you’re not “bound” to the first GP you visit.

In the evening and on weekends, when regular doctor’s offices are closed, you can use the on-call service and call 116 117. A on-call doctor will visit you at home or they will give you the doctor’s address. The service is free.

In case of a potentially life-threatening condition you should always call 112, and an ambulance will take you to the hospital emergency room. You can also go to the hospital emergency room yourself, however, you should only do this if you feel your condition is life-threatening (or otherwise needs immediate care - such as a broken bone), as emergency rooms triage aggressively, and non-urgent cases often have to wait for hours to be seen.

Your insurance probably has a Terminservice, where they will organise an appointment for you with a specialist within a certain timeframe (usually 4 weeks). If you’re having trouble getting appointments with highly in-demand specialists, it may be worth giving your insurance a call.

There are various websites with directories of doctors (e.g. Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung, Bundesärztekammer, or Jameda, which are all fairly complete, but there might be minor differences between them. To find a doctor you should go through these directories (and Google), look up their specialisation(s), and get their contact details. Some directories show user-submitted “ratings”, but these are fairly meaningless - “rating things online” is fairly uncommon in Germany, so most doctors will have only a tiny handful of ratings, which severely skews any result. In general you should visit a doctor yourself to get a first-hand impression of whether you feel like they are treating you according to your wishes, instead of relying on the opinions of others.

Medicine is only available in pharmacies (Apotheken), not in drugstores or supermarkets. Pharmacies are open during business hours on weekdays and (usually) Saturday mornings. During nights, Saturday evenings, Sundays, and public holidays, one pharmacy in an area will be open for urgent medication needs (so they will only sell you things that can’t wait until the next morning); this is called Apotheken-Notdienst). Which pharmacy is on Notdienst duty at any given time changes; you can Google “Notdienst Apotheke” for your area, or check the window of any closed pharmacy (they will have a list posted there with the Notdienst Apotheken for the next few days).

How to pay for a doctor/emergency room

Your insurance company will send you an insurance card by mail. Show this card when visiting a doctor/hospital. If you’re insured through a public insurance company, then you don’t have to pay anything (except very limited co-pays for hospital stays, see above) when visiting a doctor/hospital. If you’re insured through a private insurance company, the doctor/hospital will send you a bill (by mail), you pay it, and then send the bill to your insurance company, who will then reimburse you.

Sick leave

By law, employees in Germany have (nearly) unlimited paid sick leave from their job, and these sick days are not deducted from other kinds of paid time off (e.g. paid holidays).

If you’re sick, you need to first inform your employer that you’re sick. You do not need to disclose your condition. In many companies an e-mail or phone call to your manager is sufficient, although larger companies may have a procedure you have to follow (e.g. fill out a form or call a hotline).

You then stay home from work, turning off your work mobile and not reading work e-mails (your employer is not allowed to ask you to do any work while you’re sick). You are allowed to do anything during sick leave which is conducive to a rapid recovery. While this usually involves a lot of rest, you don’t have to stay in bed 24/7 - for example, getting some fresh air may do you good, and you may also go out and, for example, get some groceries if you feel it will not tire you out unduly. However, you may not do things which are not conducive to a rapid recovery - e.g. go out partying - that’s what your paid holidays are for.

You are strongly encouraged to remain home until you are fully recovered - it’s considered inappropriate to return to work while you’re still half-sick, as not only are you likely to infect your colleagues (if you’re sick with an infectious disease), but you would likely not be at peak performance, and are likely to become sick again in short order. Most companies have a rule whereby you’re allowed to take up to three consecutive sick days without a doctor’s note. If you foresee that you will take longer than this to recover, you need to visit a doctor and get a sick note (colloquially a Krankschreibung, officially called an Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung), which you must turn in to your employer before the start of your fourth consecutive sick day. A Krankschreibung is usually made up of three sheets of paper, only one of which should be turned in to your employer (and it does not list your condition/diagnosis).

A Krankschreibung is valid for a certain period (the length of time the doctor thinks you need to recover). If you recover faster than you may return to work earlier if you wish (there is no downside for you if you do this, and you don’t need to inform anyone - just return to work); if you feel you need even more time, then you can return to your doctor to ask for an extension.

If you’re sick for up to six weeks, then you will continue to be paid by your employer at your full salary. You may also not be fired during this time. If you’re sick for longer, then your health insurance will pay you (but you will continue to be employed) - if you have public insurance, then you will be paid around 75% of your previous gross salary, whereas with private insurance you will be paid whatever Krankengeld you signed up for in your insurance package. This lasts for up to 72 weeks. Note that all of these limits are for a specific illness/condition. For example, should you suffer a herniated disk, be sick for eight weeks, then return to work and, after a week, catch the flu, then the three day/six week/72 week counters starts again at zero, so to speak.

Which insurance should I choose?

Short answer: Any public health insurer. Their coverage is mandated by law and 98% identical, the additional things that different insurers add are nice add-ons that are ultimately not significant.

• If you want an insurance that allows you to sign up in English and has an English-speaking hotline: Techniker Krankenkasse (TK). The letters they send you will still be in German. Don’t do what this poster did and throw them away.
• If you want an insurance with the most brick-and-mortar offices where you can get personal service: AOK
• If you want to save money: Choosing the cheapest health insurance from this list allows you to save 0.3% of your gross income compared to the average health insurance and 0.6% compared to the most expensive one. But you have to pay income tax on the money you save so your net income increases by less than that. If you earn 3,000 euro per month (single, no kids) then you save 110 euro per year before taxes and 74 euro per year after taxes if you switch from an average health insurance to the cheapest health insurance.

Having an insurance that offers good service is less relevant than in some other countries since you do not have to contact them for pre-approval, to find out which hospitals are in/out of network, or to get a refund of the money you paid for healthcare since all of these concepts do not exist in Germany.

The basic insurance contribution for an employee is 14.6 percent of your income, split equally between employer and employee. In addition to that, each individual insurance can charge an additional fee. The average health insurer charges 1.3% extra. This surcharge is also split equally between employer and employee. If you are self-employed, you pay the whole cost alone.

###Students and the 20-hour limit Employed students do not have to pay the same health insurance premiums as employees if they work only up to 20 hours per week during the semester (they can work more during the semester break).

There is a widespread belief that students can not work more than 20 hours per week. This is wrong. They can work more. It just means that they lose the working student (Werkstudent) status and instead get employee status = they pay the same contributions for health insurance, unemployment insurance, and long-term care insurance as any regular employee.

Many German students avoid losing Werkstudent status. It would not be financially beneficial for them since they get free health insurance through their parents as long as they have Werkstudent status. But the calculation is different for immigrant students who have to pay for health insurance anyway.

Here as an example an immigrant student who has TK health insurance and a job that pays 12 euro per hour. If the student works 20 hours per week as a Werkstudent then the health insurance is not included in the job, the student has to pay 117.50 euro per month for the TK student tariff. If the student works 21 hours per week then the student loses Werkstudent status and health insurance is included in the job. The social contributions that the student pays for the job are higher but the student saves the 117.50 euro that they otherwise have to pay for TK health insurance. Overall it is financially beneficial for the immigrant student to work 21 hours per week instead of 20 hours:

work week	20 hours	21 hours
gross income	1043.52	1095.70
tax and contributions	97.00	222.76
net income	946.52	873.24
TK health insurance	117.50	included
remaining income	829.02	873.24
difference		+44.22

The student visa limitation which limits non-EU students to work only 240 half days per calendar year (up to 4 hours) or 120 full days (more than 4 hours) is independent of this health insurance question and has to be followed no matter how many hours the student works per week.

Private Health Insurance##

While German public insurance is very much one-size-fits-all, there is a lot more variability in private insurance plans. For example, you can have an insurance contract with significant deductibles and co-pays (but a lower monthly premium). Many plans offer to reduce your premium if you don’t submit any claims within a calendar year. Or you could have a plan which provides great cover for dental care, but very little cover for eye care. Cheaper insurance requires that you always visit a GP before seeing a specialist, while more expensive insurance covers the full cost irrespective of which doctor you see. Therefore, no matter what plan you sign up for, carefully read the details to understand what is covered and what isn’t - however, I should note that German health insurers are still bound by fairly restrictive laws (and, as with public insurance, anything medically necessary will always be covered), so you won’t find any of the typical shenanigans which US insurers sometimes pull (requiring “pre-approval” for ambulance transport, or very misleading in-network / out-of-network rules).

Unlike for people with public insurance, privately insured patients have to pay for all medical costs up front, and they then send the bill to their insurer to be reimbursed. This means that privately insured patients need to have more financial liquidity (i.e. keep more money available in their bank account), as it can take a few weeks for the insurance to reimburse the costs. For very expensive treatments (several thousand Euros and upwards), the insurer can negotiate with the care provider (e.g. doctor or hospital) to cover the costs directly.

There are only individual plans (no family plans), so you’d have to get one insurance contract per person. Health and care insurance are almost always lumped together (so when I’m writing about “health insurance” I actually mean “health and care insurance”).

Premiums

Premiums are based on your age and your health. When you apply for insurance you’ll have to fill out a very extensive medical history form, and the insurance carefully screens out any pre-existing conditions. If you have a pre-existing condition, then the insurance company may refuse to insure you at all, or may charge you a premium to compensate - they cannot exclude pre-existing conditions. Lying on this form (hiding a pre-existing condition) is fraud, and you must answer absolutely honestly - if you omit even something seemingly trivial, your health insurance will terminate your coverage, leaving you with few options beyond the Basistarif.

Therefore, it’s tough to give you a reliable estimate for how much you’d pay (as I don’t know your medical history, nor what kind of coverage you’re looking for), but you can use a comparison shopping portal like Check24 to get an estimate of your premiums. You can also check out the websites of the largest insurers - Debeka, DKV, AXA, Allianz, Signal Iduna, and HUK.

For any children older than two months, the same rules apply to them as to you (infants under two months get a standard contract with all conditions covered, but infants above two months don’t). Private health insurance for children roughly costs 150-250 € per month per child.

Quality of care

Broadly speaking, the quality of care you get with private insurance is about the same as with public insurance. You go to the same hospitals and specialists, who use the same equipment, and have access to the same treatments.

Having said that, there are a few differences:

• You tend to get appointments (particularly with in-demand specialists) faster with private insurance
• You tend to get “more” care thrown at you with private insurance. This isn’t necessarily “better”, but some people like the feeling of being shoved into an MRI machine every time they have a headache.
• There are a small number of doctors who only take privately insured patients.
• Private insurance (particularly the more comprehensive - but also more expensive - plans) tend to cover “comfort” treatments, such as single-bed rooms in hospitals (whereas publicly insured patients tend to get put into two-bed rooms, unless there is a medical reason for doing so). Some doctors have two waiting rooms - one for privately insured patients (with a coffee maker) and one for publicly insured patients (with only a water dispenser). You tend to get a bit pampered with private insurance.

As explained above, in the cases of cheaper private insurance contracts, the quality of care you get with private insurance can actually be less than with public insurance, as you (for example) are forced to see a GP before seeing a specialist, or have to fork out for co-pays and deductibles. The devil can be in the details.

Switching to private health insurance

You can only get private health insurance if you earn more than Versicherungspflichtgrenze, which in 2021 was around 64k a year (it increases a little every year). If you earn less than this, then you must take public insurance (see above).

If you’re employed, then your employer pays half of your premium (just like if you were in the public system), but only up to what the employer would have paid had you stayed in the public system (8.7% of 58k€ - the maximum income up to which public insurance premiums are assessed, or Beitragsbemessungegrenze - i.e. about 380 € / month). Assuming your (private) health insurance premium is below 760 € (380 x 2), your employer would also contribute to any other family members’ private health insurance premiums - but only up to a total contribution of ~380 € / month.

If other family members are working as well (as above, earning at least 60k), then the same rules apply to them - they get a maximum employer contribution of ~380 € / month, but only up to half of the family member’s insurance premium.

Premiums in the public system are very stable - they’re a percentage of your income, and so they only rise when your income rises, or when the government decides to raise the rates, but this happens very rarely - like once a decade. Also, keep in mind that the premiums are only assessed on the first 58k€ of your income, and this limit rises every year, so that for high earners, public insurance premiums effectively rise at around 2% per year.

Premiums in the private system, on the other hand, are constantly rising, and much faster than in the public system. I haven’t found any reliable statistics about how much they rise on average, and every private insurer will swear that his premiums rise more slowly than his competitors’. Based on various thread (see links below) Redditors report that their private insurance premiums rise somewhere around 5-8% per year. Remember that when you retire and your income goes down dramatically, your private insurance contributions won’t go down, and it will be impossible to go back to public.

Once you switch from public to private health insurance, you can only switch back if your income drops semi-permanently below the Versicherungspflichtgrenze, and/or if you become unemployed and have to rely on state support (Arbeitslosengeld). This means that, in practice, it’s impossible for most people to switch back to public insurance, as their incomes tend to rise with age, and it becomes very difficult to cut your lifestyle back sufficiently to accommodate a drop in earnings below the Versicherungspflichtgrenze. Additionally, if you’ve over the age of 55, switching back to public becomes essentially impossible under any circumstances.

Most public servants (Beamte) also have private insurance due to the way their insurance support system (Beihilfe) works, but the details for this are out of the scope of this guide.

Private vs public insurance

The ever-rising premiums are the main reason why private health insurance is such a terrible deal - it looks cheap at the beginning, but when you’re approaching and entering retirement the premiums will be sky-high (and won’t be reduced as your income drops after retirement) - not to mention that any children and non-working spouses must be insured individually (whereas they are covered for free in the public system). Therefore, if you’re seriously thinking about moving to Germany, make sure you exhaust every avenue available to enter public insurance before settling for private insurance.

If you have private health insurance, then you should also consider a few other factors:

• If you’re ill for a longer period (longer than six weeks), public health insurance would continue paying you once your employer stops paying your salary (albeit at about 70% of your previous salary); this is known as Krankengeld. If you have private insurance, you need to buy additional insurance to get Krankengeld (although you can set how much you receive - obviously, the more you get, the higher the insurance premium).
• If you’re ill for a longer period (longer than six weeks), public health insurance would continue to pay your social insurance premiums (e.g. pension insurance). If you have private health insurance, even with Krankengeld coverage, then you’d have to pay these premiums out of pocket.
• If you plan on taking a break from working (e.g. a sabbatical or parental leave), then you’ll have to pay your entire private health insurance premium yourself, as your employer will no longer be paying their share during your absence. If you had public insurance, then you wouldn’t be paying premiums at all during those periods.
• People on private insurance have to pay extra to insure their children and non-working spouses, whereas public insurance covers them at no additional cost.

Therefore, the only people for whom private health insurance can make sense are:

• People who know they will not be staying in Germany for the long term, and will certainly not retire here
• People who are certain they will never have children or non-working spouses, will never take a sabbatical or other kind of leav, and who are financially responsible enough to put aside the money they save in lower insurance premiums when young, so that they can use this money to pay for their sky-high premiums in old age

For everyone else, private health insurance is (to put it somewhat bluntly) a trap for the young and stupid.

Other threads describing Redditors’ experiences with private health insurance:

• Private or public health insurance
• People with private insurance: why? how much are you making? How much are you paying? Are you happy with it?
• Private health insurance - in practice
• Switch to private health insurance?

Travel/expat health insurance

Short-term visitors to Germany (e.g. tourists) obviously don’t need to enrol in the German public health insurance system. Often, these visitors have travel health insurance from their home countries, which cover them in case of an accident or unexpected illness while they are in Germany. There are also German insurance companies which offer travel insurance to visitors.

Many of these companies (such as Mawista, Care Concept, Advigon, feather expat insurance, and others) have branched out and now sell “student”, “international”, “academic”, or “expat” insurance. These policies have very attractive premiums and are marketed aggressively to foreigners in Germany. However, it’s important to know that these are borderline scams: as they are merely rebranded travel insurance, and don’t offer anywhere near the coverage of German public (or comprehensive private) insurance. More often than not, they have global coverage limits (so the insurance stops paying after a certain total payout has been reached - if you’re in the middle of an expensive treatment at that point, you’re screwed), time limits, generally cover only emergency care, and have a reputation for fighting tooth and nail against paying for anything, see here for example.

Treat those expat health insurances as “an insurance to get another insurance”. Use them to get your residence permit, and as soon as you can, switch to real public or private health insurance.

Many students and freelancers stay on expat insurance because it’s cheaper, and later realise that they can’t get any other insurance. Expat insurance is rarely accepted for visa renewals, so it can cause a lot of trouble if they can’t find anyone to insure them.

How to find out if an insurer is offering you good private insurance or crappy travel/expat insurance: Private insurance always offers contracts that you can stay in for your whole life, travel/expat insurance always runs out after some time (often 5 years).

You can also ask the insurer if their policy is in compliance with Section 193 (3) of the Insurance Contract Act (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz), which mandates that every person who lives in Germany needs to have health insurance that fulfills certain coverage standards. Private insurers will confirm that their insurance complies with this mandate, travel/expat insurers will not.

Other options

Depending on your situation, there might be cheaper options:

• Student insurance - public health insurance tarif for students
• Coverage through your parents’ or spouse’s public health insurance (Familienversicherung) - for people with a low income
• Coverage through another EU country’s health insurance (EHIC) - for Erasmus students
• Coverage through the Arbeitsagentur - for unemployed people
• Coverage through the Künstlersozialkasse - for freelance artists and publicists

This health insurance calculator lists which options you qualify for.

What immigrants say about their experience with the German public health care system

Youtube

• Lamblike (accident): https://youtu.be/3gbwWOGhRbk?t=775
• Dana (lost voice): https://youtu.be/cNo3bv_Ez_g?t=2m7s
• Armstrong (brain tumor): https://youtu.be/zHcwOgbsBYk?t=1636
• Katie (prenatal care): https://youtu.be/gRe2sK0m500?t=10m7s
• Antoinette (childbirth): https://youtu.be/YZaGMXSLnts?t=2m10s
• Ashton (chronic sinus infection): https://youtu.be/017c4FA2zjM?t=372
• Jenna (childbirth): https://youtu.be/9LNNK2bOb7U?t=692
• Victoria (seeing a doctor): https://youtu.be/OE7qbjM4rWE?t=58s
• Julie (lost pregnancy): https://youtu.be/ID9MbJTHSDc?t=404
• Hayley (difference to the US): https://youtu.be/uSlwuS_zxmQ?t=3m35s
• BaytoBayern (finding a doctor): https://youtu.be/aXGA1H9cWYA?t=367
• Armstrong (depression): https://youtu.be/bQUSwODxmD8?t=361
• Dana (sick leave): https://youtu.be/NtgmnJK-nAM?t=305
• Diana (sick leave): https://youtu.be/tbwYoPxuPHs?t=279
• Black Forest Family (sick leave): https://youtu.be/saRQYXtu1j0?t=976
• Bay to Bayern (sick leave): https://youtu.be/aXGA1H9cWYA?t=518

Blogs

Sue: “As an American who lived in Germany for several years, I much prefer the German system. You don’t have to worry about losing your insurance if you lose your job. You don’t have to worry about confusing things like co-insurance and deductibles, whether your insurance will cover a particular procedure or whether or not a certain doctor will accept your insurance.”

Courtney got insurance with preexisting Diabetes: “My insurance covered 95% of the costs of my medication! I realize that Europeans are probably super bored reading this post, but this is a big deal for us Americans, especially for those unlucky Americans that have chronic diseases.”

Shana: “The longest I have had to wait for a diagnostic exam was two weeks. It was for an MRI on my back. (…) We have had friends who have been diagnosed with tumors and cancer. They were on the operating table within a week; some had immediate surgery. No one that we know of has had to wait. One friend was sent from Berlin to Heidelberg for experimental brain surgery on a tumor. His family received discounts on temporary housing in Heidelberg for the duration of his stay. His treatment has thus far been successful. No one is treated less importantly for being old or impoverished. (…) We never have to worry about our insurance denying coverage or dropping us from their plan. I still can’t get used to this, and feel a little panicky when we get a letter from our provider.”

Christina: “If you became seriously ill, your treatment will be paid for and there’s no chance of it bankrupting you. (…) I have migraines and sometimes my medication doesn’t work and if it’s the middle of the night, in the US I need to go to the emergency room for an injection. In Germany, I can just call the doctor to come for a home visit, which is so much more comfortable. (…) In Germany, I’ve never had more than a 30 minute wait in an ER. Often it has been 5 minutes or less. I’ve never felt rushed out before I want to go. (…) My hospital stay cost €2,779.22. Everything was covered by insurance except that Rainer “rented” the second bed in my hospital room for two nights (giving us a private room and him a place to lie down), at €40 a night, including meals. Much cheaper than getting a hotel room near the hospital!”

Maria: “I never worried about insurance covering procedures, though we did have to pay for my son’s circumcision (unnecessary surgery anyone?), I never had mounds of paperwork, no worrying about if my doctor was “in network” or out, and never huge additional bills to pay for procedures, visits or tests. We were not crippled by costs, and we received excellent care.”

Amanda: “As a grad student in the US, I spent 6 hours in the hospital with a very bad case of the flu. Nothing drastic——but the grand total was $10,000. (Including an outrageous charge of $400 for a saline IV). My insurance left me to pay about $2,000 (and as a grad student that was my entire savings). In comparison, this year in Germany I spent 6 DAYS in the hospital for getting my tonsils out. Total that I was charged: 60 Euros. I am grateful every single day for the German health care system.”

Vailian: “When she went into labor, we just drove to the nearest hospital. There was a midwife on duty, and a doctor. (…) I was encouraged to stay for the birth. The birth went without complications, and after delivery, they gave my wife a glass of champagne and took her back to her room while the baby was examined. They stayed in the hospital for about a week, which seems to be a normal length of time. No charges for anything.”

 

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