- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
German politicians are fond of saying, “Work must be worth it.” But ever more people who work full-time need state benefits. And the new minimum wage hike is seen as disappointing.
Unpopular opinion, but I actually like the competitive landscape in public health care in Germany. IMHO this is the best example for capitalism: you define exactly what each company has to deliver, and they can compete on:
pricing
service
additional benefits
The nature of the strong regulation here makes them compete on actual relevant things, and they can’t externalize the costs (mostly).
I actually believe having just one public health care company would result in a worse service.
I would rather focus on the ridiculous increase in wealth inequality, in Germany, and around the globe. That’s the root of all evil.
Competiton is always good for the consumer, sure, but too much of it is wasted money. It should be maybe 5-6 Krankenkassen, maybe bump that to 8-9, but this should be in no case a double-digit number. This is in my eyes the sweet spot for both preventing the formation of a cartell and simultaneously offering a wide range of services.
Just think about it, the current 96 companies all have to have their own C-suite, most likely several hundreds of employees - for what? This is a huge waste.
About 95% of the money spent by the public health insurance company is „Leistungsausgaben“, I.e., paying out people for health related costs.
You can’t optimize that away, even when combining the companies. The remaining 5% is overhead. Having worked in a big company, I can tell you that big companies are not that much more efficient than small companies. In fact, the overhead is often even larger since there is lots more cross-communication involved between departments. In the end, everyone that is now a CEO would be an SVP instead, and barely anything would change.