He said that cardiology here was about five years more advanced than in the USA. I’m sure there exceptions. I’m sure that institutions like Mass General in Boston, Mt. Sainai in New York, etc. offer top care. Presbyterian in Dallas is also first rate. But there is the accessibility issue, and a lot of people live hundreds of miles from a first rate institution.
Germany is relatively compact, so that is less of an issue here. Insurance is an issue for me, though not for my wife. As a German social worker, she knows the ropes, although even she had no health insurance from age 60 to 65 (sorry for the propagandists, but universal health insurance in Germany is a myth). I had to pay for her German equivalent of COBRA for five years, though that was only a fifth of what I would have had to pay. I was quoted a premium of about $35,000 per year, and that was 15 years ago.
I am officially on BCBS from my employer in Texas, though they deny everything, so I am basically uninsured. Fortunately, care like I am currently receiving in Germany only costs about a third of what it costs in the States, so I’m still less out of pocket than I would be by paying the $35,000 yearly premium.
I’ll bet Blue Cross could make a fortune by chartering planes full of insured patients to Germany and getting them treated here instead of in overpriced American hospitals. I guess they would need a magic pill to give them a knowledge of German, although of all the doctors and nurses that treated me yesterday, only the head surgeon was actually a native-born German. The rest were Polish, Armenian, Chinese and Malagasy. Still, every one of them spoke impeccable German.
= new reply since forum marked as read