MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I can't get this out of my head, so sorry, but I'm going to write about it here.
I have some German cousins, who I used to see quite a lot of when they were small; lately I see them only occasionally.
Anyway, back in September, the eldest son of my German aunt and uncle caught a cold. The cold spread to his sinuses. From there it spread to his blood. Somehow it then ate away at his heart valves. It turns out that this is very very bad for you.
So he went into hospital, was pumped full of drugs, put into an induced coma, and they then replaced one of the valves with a stainless steel one and stitched up the other.
Apparently the choices are pig heart valves, stainless steel, or carbon fibre. Obviously as a cyclist, I would have gone for the CF ones, but steel is still real in Germany, so SS it was.
I didn't go to visit him as it's a long way to go to see someone in a coma. Mistake.
The operation went ahead, and the prognosis was apparently good (he could have had all sorts of organ failure problems, or even brain damage, but no, it was all fine).
Then we heard that the SS valve had fallen out. A few days later they switched him off.
<insert a number of expletives that would get me banned>.
But it didn't end there. I went along to the funeral in Germany (turns out it was actually quite easy to get there). It was an amazing event. His former girlfriend is a force of nature, and had organized two choirs to sing, followed by a party in a pub.
Here I learned the scary bit. It turned out that my cousin had been a bit haphazard in his financial affairs.
In particular, the German healthcare system is not like the NHS. You don't get free treatment. Instead what happens is that everyone must take out health insurance, and pay premiums. This then covers your care.
Except that my cousin had not taken out any insurance. Whether he simply forgot, or thought that he'd never get ill and so didn't want to waste money, we will never know.
By some quick action on the part of my uncle, he had been able to get into hospital in the first place, but he wasn't actually covered for the treatment he received.
As you can imagine, having your chest cut open, valves put in, and stitched back up again, does not come cheap. Just as well he had the steel valves and not the CF valves, but even with that saving, the cost of the treatment was a six figure number.
You would imagine that when he died, his debts died with them.
You would imagine wrong.
The insurance company pursued my aunt and uncle for the debt. Fortunately you can decline to inherit someone's estate, which they did. They then went after my other cousins, who also declined, and just the other day my parents were contacted. I'm expecting to receive a letter in the post from Germany informing me about this and the mechanics involved in declining an inheritance. Apparently a trip to the German embassy should sort it out. And then they might give up.
I'm not angry about this. I guess they're just doing their job. But it's pretty cr*p. And it's an interesting perspective on how alternative health care systems work.
If my cousin had survived, then he would now be living for the rest of his life with a massive debt, although maybe he could have come to the UK and got one of those insolvency things.
Pretty rubbish all round.
Right, I've got that off my chest. Now I can go for a bike ride.
sorry to hear about your cousin's death, but sadly this sort of thing happens fairly often in germany - no insurnace, no treatment.
germany isn't quite the socialist paradise people seem to think it is.
i was un-insured for about 18 months as i wasn't earning very much and didn't want to spend 145€ each month on a service i hadn't needed in my adult years. i then got a proper job and i needed to be insured. i went along to one insurer and got told i'd have to ask my old insurer for some number. they said we'll give you the number, but first you owe us 2500€ for the period you were not insured. hmmm... fick (german for ****). went to a lawyer and he essentially said the best thing to do was pay it as the chances that i would win the case were very small. but the shitty thing is, is that if anything had happened during the time i hadn't paid i wouldn't have been covered, yet i still - according to german law - had to pay it.
the system really is crap....
the minimum monthly rate for health insurance is 145€ or 15.5% (once that equates to more than 145€) of your monthly income.
if you are an employee and are not earning over ~5k€ a month then you will have to automatically pay 15.5% of your wage to the "public health" insurance company. this system is called "public health", but it's not... the money gets paid to a private insurer of your choice. each insurer has different benefits; do you get treated by the head of department or a junior doctor, single room or ward bed, tv or no tv... the list of options is endless (and a nightmare).
if you have a monthly salary over 5k€ a month you can go "private".
if you are self-employed, as i am, you can go "private" unless you have some sort of medical history that the insurer doesn't like in which case you pay into the "public self-employed system" which incurs a minimum cost of 240€ or 14.9%.
"private" works much like the "public" system, but you get quoted a monthly premium. this works out much cheaper for most people - if i were paying the 14.9% i'd be paying over 600€ a month. as it is i pay 127€. i have the most basic cover.
the GF earns 2400€ and pays 372€ a month for her health care!
her old man pays nigh on 700€!
and to top it all you have to pay 10€ each quater when you visit the doctors.
if i receive any treatment i have to pay up front and then claim the money back from my insurer.
health care could be so much cheaper for the german people if they nationalsed health care and got rid of all the bureaucracy, pen pushing, pointless advertising (how much of your premium goes on treating people and how much goes on people writing quotes, sorting out claims, marketing, etc.?).
it really boils my piss.
being here makes me really appreciate te NHS and i now get really pissed off if people start complaining about it.
Sounds a lot like the US system. I sat next to a very christian woman on an Amtrak journey in the US once, she spent hours going on about how she had been all over the world 'helping people' and all that, anyway, the conversation switched to healthcare... turns out she was VERY anti-state healthcare and claimed she didnt want her tax going to people who 'couldnt be bothered' to buy insurance. As you can imagine i was slightly confused by her rather rapid switch in attitudes from 'helpful' to 'hateful' in one ease step, i suppose for some state-healthcare is not a requirement, personally i think its a very good thing as you never know how much of it you might need.
The NHS is literally one of our most precious national treasures. The OP's sad experience says it all really. However, free health care should not absolve citizens from their duty to make more healthy lifestyle choices. I recently read that nearly 20% of the NHS's budget was spent treating diabetes. Can this be true? Alcohol abuse and smoking must also cost taxpayers a small fortune. As the Roman's used to say, "Everthing in moderation."...
i have ever understood why anyone dislikes state healthcare or why anyone thinks that addition of insurance premiums would be efficient
Probably the best thing we have in this country its great
with the German system as above remember that is on top of your tax. so not only do you pay more tax than we do you then have to pay a large additional amount for healthcare.
Remember that when moaning about how high taxes are it the UK and how crap the NHS is. we get the system we pay for - and we don't pay enough to have the best of everything.
NHS, i dont hate it, but it could be a lot better...
Thankfully the Health and Social Care Bill (e.g. The NHS Privatisation Act) is getting some proper opposition so hopefully we'll not see that situation.
90% of GPs surveyed recently said they opposed the Bill.
Yes it could be float -needs more money tho. Thats the basic issue
Sorry to hear about your cousin too. It does make you realise how lucky you all are in the UK with the NHS. Having said that the standard of health care in Germany is much better than the UK but as already stated the people pay for it. I can also think of some examples where patients in the UK have not recieved the latest drugs/treatment that their counterpart in the Germany would becuase of the cost. What I don't like about the system here is it is unashamedly two tier. If you are privately insured (as I am because I'm self employed) you get preferential treatment to state insured patients. This means you get private rooms in hospitals and are seen by the consultant and not a junior doctor and not having to wait for basic operations etc. This is because the doctors can charge privately insured patients and a higher tariff and seeing as they are in business of making money they want to have more private patients.
is it really 15.5% of your gross salary?? That seems (is!) rather a lot.
Having said that the standard of health care in Germany is much better than the UK but as already stated the people pay for it.
My GP seems to think that German healthcare often treats people unnecessarily, precisely because people pay for it. He reckons that they often find problems where none really exist.
The NHS is very cheap for the service we get.
I can't see why anyone wants private health insurance as the norm - you only need to look at car insurance to see how effective insurance is when you're forced to buy it...
Luckily as Brits we have the E111/Healthcard, so it covers us whenever in Europe.
But when I lived in Germany I fell ill, but as they don't have a GP-type system, but specialists you need to self-diagnose and then contact who ever deals with your 'problem'...
But for the poster, your cousin knew the system and decided to 'opt-out'...
What I don't like about the system here is it is unashamedly two tier. If you are privately insured (as I am because I'm self employed) you get preferential treatment to state insured patients. This means you get private rooms in hospitals and are seen by the consultant and not a junior doctor and not having to wait for basic operations etc. This is because the doctors can charge privately insured patients and a higher tariff and seeing as they are in business of making money they want to have more private patients.
you've obviously got posher cover than me! i opted for basic cover (on ward, junior docs, etc) and the highest excess that the company would allow when getting quotes for my private insurance. it meant that the premiums were much lower. the 100€ or so a month i'm not paying for posh cover means i can afford the 600€ excess. i would have prefered a lower cover and higher excess.
ernie, i've heard that too. a friend of ours said she had stomach pains and got whisked off to some fancy hospital to under go various tests. turns out she had some dodgy food in italy.
another went to her doc and said she was feeling stressed so he sent her on a week-long spa break! she was only a student... WTF!
the care may be better, but i'd rather pay less and wait a little longer to see a doc than paying through the teeth where the end result is still the same - i get better.
don't even start on dentistry costs!
But for the poster, your cousin knew the system and decided to 'opt-out'...
the new rule that came in about 3-4 years ago meant that you have to be insured. prior to that is was a case of take-your-chance.
this is what caught me out and ultimately cost me 2500€ in back payments for a service i never needed. none of my peers or the GF's friends and family knew about the change in the law. it is quite possible that the OP's cousin didn't, either...
It's very unfortunate that the surgery had complcations, and that sadly your cousin died.
I wish that all the people winging about how long they've been waiting in a U.K. A&E could hear your tale.
Our N.H.S. may not be perfect but it is free!
The NHS isn't free!!
well, very near damn it!
isn't it essentially free for foreigners? if, say, a nicaraguan got ill/hit by a bus then wouldn't he be made good on the NHS withouit he or his government incurring any cost?
Nope - he (in theory anyway) would be billed for the cost - unless his government has reciprocal arrangements. A&E treatment is usually exempt although costs can be recover from insurers in many cases. Inpatient treatment will be billed. No entitlement to NHS GP services
Its a complex situation
To OP sorry to hear about the sad news but at least he did not care about the system.
TJ, I thought you always agree with all things United State of European Nations? No? Bloody hell TJ ... you are evil. 😆
So if you are a penniless person in Deutschland then you are well dead is that true?
@ chewkw. not quite.. if you're properly poor or unemployed the state will cover your health insurance costs.
in stark contrast to the NHS is that here in De is that once you are retired you still have to continue paying your health insurance premiums. if you are privately insured the costs can increase dramatically. this is a large sum that needs to be factored into people's saving/spending plans.
although, i'm not sure how it works for retired employees. i'll have to find out.
@ TJ. that is what i thought, A&E is free for everyone. so if our fictious nicaraguan broke his leg mountain biking he'd get his leg wrapped up for free. incidently he'd also be rescued from the hillside FOC by mountain rescue.
here in germany it is well worth spending 50€/year on DAV (Deutsche Alpenverein, or German Alpine Club) membership as it covers you for mountain rescues. if you don't have cover it can cost upwards of 10k€ to be heli-ed off a hillside.
I guess they're just doing their jobThat seems to be my experience of German service related industries. Good at doing their job, not very good at caring about the customers.
We had some shockingly insensitive treatment by some people there.
or was that just because you didn't want to meet them partway? You posted numerous times stating how you had ignored the consensus there and complaining they didn't like it
scheisse... molgrips... that thing with the amt, the abmeldung form.... completely forgot about it.
i emailed them , but i haven't had a response either.....
do you still need it? i'm off for a few days next week. i'll go in and ask if you want.
and yes, customer service is lacking here at times (most of the time when dealing with officialdom).
we all think it will never happen to us so either do not take out insurance or moan about the nhs as we do pay in but get nothing back.
if i am honest this is the way i did think, lucky for me private insurance comes with the job.
last may notice when pushing had on the bike my breathing was becoming a problem,went to the gp and was told it was possibly asthma so for the next 5months was going backwards and forwards with no improvement.
then decided to go private 2nd week in october after 2 scans,i found out last tuesday i have throat cancer with a 5cm mass and today im off to harefield hospital to get the squatters out. where it goes from there is down to the pet scan this friday.
im not knocking the nhs but it sometimes takes longer to get going and my luck is i have private to sort this out as quickly as possible i just wish the nhs was able to operate and respond a lot quicker
[i]The NHS isn't free!! [/i]
But it is to the end user, in that there is no separate bill - and really only those who pay tax/NI/VAT etc actually pay for it.
I remember an interesting discussion on our system with an American colleague, and the one bit that really surprised him was that anyone who turned up to A&E would be seen and 'fixed' and/or admitted. And obviously non-taxpayers (ie children) who'd no payment record - and irrelevent who their parents were.
And the best bit, was that our entire system costs less per head than the US spent just on Medicare/Veterans etc.
I've used the NHS, especially as a family - but also had private converage through work, and actually paid for private too (to jump the queue really, as we are self-employed so any days lost cost).
[url= http://www.amazon.de/2030-Aufstand-Jungen-Bettina-Zimmermann/dp/B0048IDRS2 ]Reality extrapolated to fiction.[/url] Worth a watch if you undestand German.
It's about health costs driving people into bankruptcy who then disappear into an alternative society having had themselves declared dead.
nice one edukator....
thank you youtube,
that's this evening's entertainment taken care of.....
Sorry to hear about your story showerman. A friend also went through the NHS GP system last year with similar poor outcomes.
A great system once it know what's wrong with you, but there can be an awful lot of sluggishness in finding out what that thing is in the first place.
cant be worse than america
i did 3months at a summer camp for inner city kids, most of em were in care or from welfare families
i was routinely shocked at the health issues some of the kids had, stuff that a course of antibiotics or a quick visit to the gp would sort out in no time, the kids treated the nurse like a VIP because she handed out basic medicine they rarely saw at home
im aware that this country has issues- ive worked with kids in haringey but nothing like the stuff i saw over there and this was in massachusetts a state with possibly the best public healthcare in the country!
regarding the OP
i think germanys handling of greece has shown that they are not too sympathetic when it comes to those at the thin edge of the wedge
My German chum seems to have to make some sort of compulsory pension contributions but won't see a penny?? she explained but i got bored.
Most free healthcare in the world sucks apart from Cuba ... as I was told once.
You have to remember many of those that enter medical profession is not about saving life because that comes second. The first is prestige of being a doctor with huge returns £££ then saving life.
Take care of yourself.
🙄
p/s: alpin, no subtitle!? Don't understand a word at all ...
[i]The NHS is literally one of our most precious national treasures.[/i]
+10000
It's not there to support people who don't want to pay into the system, it's there so we all get health care irrespective of income and that's a beautiful thing.
Sorry to hear about your cousin. Hope the German authorities don't come after you. My uncle Harry got shot by the German authorities and then locked up! He said it was awful in that prison.
Mind you, he had just dropped a load of bombs on them.
p/s: alpin, no subtitle!? Don't understand a word at all ...
watched it last night. typical german drama-docu. very slow moving, devoid of any emotion - although that might just be a realistic portrayal of german life.
what struck me was that the future they descrbed isn't that far away from today's realitiy.
it strikes me as odd that the german's can be quite crictical of their system, yet do nothing to change it. as said above, if their health system was nationalsed there would be lots of people out of work.
for all the talk of germans being efficient, i don't think they are.... well, cettainly not those working for the state or when it comes to the bureacracy of living here.
@ samuri.... a friend told a similar joke in relation to how long it was taking some guy to unload a truck.... "my grandad could unload 200 tonnes in under a minute....."
Is the UK that much better? My mother-in-law broke her hip in France a few years back. She was picked up in minutes and operated on within four hours. She made a rapid recovery enjoying excellent free physio. Shortly afte she broke her other hip in the uk. After four or five days my sister-in-law realised that the hospital was working a triage based on age, that my mother-in-law was low prority and being left to die. My sister-in-law is a solicitor so noted conversations with hospital staff - specifiacally the age-related comments.
With my mother-in-laws condition steadily deteriorating I rang the hospital and read them the outline of a story I had written comparing the treatment of an elderly patient with a broken hip in the two countries. I read them a phone number and said I'd be ringing the number with the story unless I got confrimation my mother-in-law had received treatment within the day. Two hours later my wife got a most delightfully insulting phone call to tell me my mother-in-law was in the operating theatre.
It's quite possible that just givng the phone number of the most hated newspaper on this forum saved my mother-in-law's life and it certainly saved her from continued suffering.
So, treatment in the UK is based on who you are, how old you are and how persuasive your relatives are.
With respect, Edukator, you are comparing a system to an anecdote. I'm sure others will say how good/bad/brilliant/rubbish health systems are in every country (my own experience in the UK is normally good but could do better). The original point was that regardless of outcome the OP's cousin or his estate would be lumbered with an humongous debt.
They haven't been lumbered with humungous debt, they declined the inheritance. However, had the cousin been married his wife would have found herself in the situation of the husband in the film I linked and that Alpin posted a YouTube of.
There are plenty of scare stories from both public and private systems. They are only run by people after all. If you go to a person for a diagnosis it's down to them if they get it right or not - regardless of who pays their bills.
I think most doctors and nurses working for the NHS do so because they want to help people, not for the glamour, prestige and money...
I don't think many people would argue that there are fantastic provisions in other countries IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT.
It's quite possible that just givng the phone number of the most hated newspaper on this forum saved my mother-in-law's life and it certainly saved her from continued suffering
I wonder who else you bumped out of the way by doing that?
for all the talk of germans being efficient, i don't think they are
I agree - this was discussed between the Brits where I worked too. Rather than efficient I would say that they tend to be single-minded, which is great when you are concentrating on an engineering problem or something, but it's not so good when dealing with how people might feel, or taking a bit of initiative.
Alpin - yes, I do still need that - they ignored my emails too. It'd be fantastic if you could help!
Edukator, how does the system work in France?
if the same had happened here in Germany your M-in-L would have been treated promptly and the NHS would have been billed for the work. and i'd guess that the cost of her treatment would be much higher here than in the UK as the hospitals provide "better" (read more expensive) treatment knowing that they'll make money on it.
ala in the film; some hospitals refuse patients based on their injury as they are too expensive to treat.
as i said, i don't find the gap between today's reality and the film's fiction that far apart...
@ molgrips.... i'll ride down to the Amt tomorrow...
Dankeschoen.
Got any snow there btw?
bout two-three inches here in town. quite a bit more down south. it should snow tomorrow or wednesday. i'll go boarding the day after it snows...
In France we all pay a large part of our income in "charges sociales", "contribution sociale généralisée", "remboursement de la dette sociale" (even if the dette continues to grow) and this mountian of money is used to make the system work, rather well, and for everyone, so far. How long that will continue given the increasing number of possible treatments and their costs I have no idea.
When you need treatment you go to the doctor or a public hospital or private clinic and most or all of what you spend is reinboused depending on what you have done. You can take out a "mutuelle", a private insurance to cover the non-reimboursed part but I don't.
so you still have to front up some money for the treatment you have done?
For some ballance to edukators posts.......
I broke my arm in Spain recently, the Spanish 'NHS' hospital is exactly the same as a British one. Plenty of waiting arround in A&E and a 3 day wait for surgery, which ended up being 10 days as I had to be back in the UK on day3, which then meant the 3 days in the british system were interupted by a weekend and the christmas break (i.e no scheduled operations).
My experience of private insurance in the whole thing was dealing with a load of tight fisted **** monkeys who refused to pay out for anything at all and basicly told me to get down the chemist for some over the counter painkillers as a broken arm didn't apprently meet their criteria for a serious injury and therefore I should just wait untill I got home and go to A&E with it.
Long live the NHS.
Usually yes, though though there are some things that are reimboursed at 100%. You pay after treatment so it's not a case of not being treated if you don't have the money.
same as in germany, then....
you get billed for the treatment which you can pay for and then claim back or pass the invoice onto your insurer. the second option can be risky if the bill needs to be paid within a certain time frame and your insurer is an inefficient pile of arse.
The letter has arrived.
Better get my butt down to the German embassy.
Just phoned up the dodgy German insurance company. Their phone menu system is accompanied by a "Land of Hope and Glory". How very odd.