I am from Germany and agree that US healthcare is very shiny. But once you get sick it’s very easy to get stuck in an extremely expensive bureaucratic nightmare between hospitals and insurances. I prefer the German system where I can go to a doctor or ride an ambulance without the fear of having to pay tons of money.
The German healthcare system was surprising to me. It was affordable, it was fairly honest, and our anecdotal experience was not as good as most experienced we’ve had in the USA.
A few examples for those wondering:
* the total cost for over a week stay was a couple hundred dollars - very affordable!
* certain painkillers banned in the USA were the first line of defense there
* getting very strong pain killers was next to impossible - I think we probably only got it because we were family members of the anesthesiologist, and he knew we needed it. And it took nearly 24 hours of agonized pain before we could finally get them
* nurses are not trained to put in IVs - we needed an MD for that. And the MD had a lot of things to do and we had to wait quite awhile even though there were many nurses around. In the USA, I think most people with the title of nurse can do that
In the US people with the title of nurse can be someone who is highly skilled and is playing an important hands-on role in major and complicated surgeries.
I think some other places around the world use the title nurse for what may be a medical assistant in the US. (No clue about Germany though)
