DAK, or How I learned to love socialised medicine (Part One)

Your television tells you that socialised medicine will involve life-threatening waits for specialists, bureaucratic and opaque administration of billing and coverage, and widespread suffering. I ask: how is this different from your health care now?

Rather than waste my breath arguing that corporate health care is already bureaucratic, responsible to no one and generally bad for one's health, or pointing out that nearly all Americans go on national health care already when they turn 65, I'd rather tell you about my new fabulous health insurance from the Deutsche Angestellten-Krankenkasse.

The German health system is probably more similar to what the new American one will be than the Canadian one. As in Obama's proposal, health insurance is mandatory for everyone. Unlike the Canadian or British system, in which everyone is a member of the national health system and then buys additional private insurance, Germans can choose either a "gesetzliche" ("regulated") or private health care provider. You have to earn more than 48600 euro per year to be allowed to choose private insurance, which around 10% of Germans have.

The "regulated" insurance is funded by a payroll tax just like Medicare and Medicaid. It differs from those schemes in that "regulated" health care is run by companies, not by the government. The government sets a specific percentage of pay that goes toward health care (15.5%, half being paid by the employee and half by the employer) and sets and monitors standards for care and in some cases, payment of doctors. As a student with no official income, I pay 60 euros per month as the basic fee.

Each company is then free to provide additional services in order to attract customers. Last year, the companies were even allowed to set a price for their services, which was under 15.5% in many cases. The government standardised this payroll tax in a massive health care reform that almost everyone regards as a huge failure, but that's a topic for another day. As for additional services, my insurance gives me money back when I don't go to the doctor, has a point-collection system for healthy behaviours (500 points for doing a yoga course, at 500,000 points you win a bicycle, etc.), and has really excellent customer service. Waiting in phone lines forever to talk to an exploited and overworked Indian call centre employee? Not for me.
Were I able to afford private health care, I'd enjoy benefits like having a single room in hospital (rooms with two beds are more common), coverage of more experimental/more expensive medications and less wait time for specialists.

What have I gotten out of the system so far? A new retainer, designed to prevent me from ruining my teeth and jaw by grinding at night. Cost? Nothing. Cost of my previous American retainer, which actually encouraged jaw muscle strain? $300.
I've been to the doctor a few times for a cold as well. I pay ten euros as a quarterly office fee, and around five euros for most medications. Last time I was sick in America, I doled out well over a hundred for the doctor's visit alone. This while I was paying more for insurance.

Did I have to get a physical to determine if I had any pre-existing conditions? Of course not. Did I have to fill out lengthy and complicated forms to determine if I might become an expensive customer? Nope.
Will I have to get new health insurance because I'm quitting my job to become a student? Would I ever be in danger of losing my health insurance because I lost or changed my job? Were I to get a life-threatening disease that I may have caused through my own behaviour, like HIV or lung cancer, could I be thrown out of my plan?
No, no, and no.

In the next few blog posts, I'll examine the German system in more detail, including complaints by people who know and the system's historical roots, which *astonishingly* have nothing to do with Hitler.