I came across this last night and stayed up too late reading it. It's a fascinating exposé of where at least a good part of the money is going -- the extra money that we Americans spend on health care that doesn't bring us any better outcomes. I think it's relevant to HN because a lot of us with families and/or in middle age can't risk quitting our jobs to start startups without assurance that we'll be able to buy ad…
A great book on this is Healing America by T.R. Reid, who saw doctors in eight countries about his bum shoulder and wrote about their healthcare systems. Interestingly, single-payer isn't the only good option, or even necessarily the best. Canada was the only country with single-payer like we talk about in the U.S. The U.K. is single-payer but also single-provider, the doctors work for the government-run healthcare s…
Doctors only send their bills once every three months and payment takes a while after that - a week would be a dream. Insurance can deny payment if they determine it wasn't medically necessary (and they do checks if they find a trend) but that comes out of the doctor's pocket. And for expensive things (like psychotherapy or dental) it needs to be preapproved by the insurance but they are are very limited in what they can deny.
And good digital health records? I don't think I will live long enough to see that in Germany. The only thing that leaves your doctor's office digitally (within they are free to work with paper or computer or whatever they wish) are the procedure and a short code for the diagnosis. If you need to see a specialist, paper still gets send around.
Edit: I just read the Germany chapter of that book. While it contains some (not really significant) errors and is a bit outdated (now six years old) I would still recommend that book based on this chapter.