German healthcare: quantity over quality?

Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

Apologies for not sending out either of the regular newsletters last week. I came down with a throat infection which ended up becoming so severe that I had to be treated in hospital.

I won’t scare you away with all the gory details. Suffice to say, my ability to swallow had become so restricted that I required emergency surgery in the back of my mouth.

I was released from hospital on Sunday and am now supposed to be recovering at home.

This seems like as appropriate a moment as any to write a newsletter on the state of the German health service.

Touch wood, but in over a decade in Germany this was only the third time that I had a personal reason to see behind the walls of a hospital. And, given that the other two occasions were the births of my children, it was the first time that I wasn’t glad to be there.

Admittedly coming from Britain, with our hopeless NHS, I’m easily impressed. But on each of my stays in a German Krankenhaus it felt more li…