German Ex-Automation engineer here - was more like 120€ - don't forget they usually sub-contract that out..

> €157,680

outside germany the `,` reads as thousands-separator. may I offer you a `.` in exchange?

also that's gross, not net (Brutto/Netto) which is _painfully_ lower.

I think you should also mention the ~17k Euro social contributions that your employer pays on top, which could otherwise be part of your salary. Then it is actually pretty much 50%

Don’t forget the mandatory radio broadcast fee every household has to pay even if you don’t read or watch any of those propaganda channels

Thank you.

I think it is important to be (at least a bit) precise in this debate.

I dislike the wording "social contribution", as these are (mandatory) insurances that benefit the insured person in case of sickness, retirement, loss of employment, etc. Discussion about the cost efficiency and fairness of the system are warranted, of course. Anyway, the current generation of retirees benefit greatly from it, so for them at least it was worth paying.

Since you are accounting all those taxes, including the VAT on the citizen's side, companies only pay the Arbeitgeberanteil (you didn't mention) and the taxes on profit?

>One of the most regressive precepts of the German system.

If you mean the existence of two-tier private/public insurance, yes. The two-tier system was abolished in most of Europe for good reason. Either they abolished substitutive private insurance, restricted it, or transformed private insurers into regulated providers of universal basic coverage, e.g. very recently in the Netherlands.

If you make 90k in Germany, you pay around 36k to mandatory (varying degrees) insurance/pension plus taxes if you're single. About 19.5k of that are actual taxes. If you're married/have children that total can drop to ~30k and will include health insurance for your entire family unit.

How do you define good/bad? People mostly seem to talk about wait time for socialized health care, but where we live in US there's plenty of specialists that you gotta book months ahead of time. When my mom needed a pacemaker it was a 4 month process. My wife's OBGYN is booked a year out - god help you if you miss an appointment. Anyone working in pediatrics look like zombies.

Urgent care clinics have been big in our region. The primary system is obviously overloaded, and 2 of these have popped up in the last 3 years. It's more expensive per visit than our primary physician, but cheaper than an ER visit, which could easily take half a day anyways.

Complaining about the service quality for public health insurance customers in Germany is pretty much the definition of "first world problem" though. FWIW I never switched over to private insurance even though my income would allow it, also once you get above a certain age you can't switch back and that's when the private insurers really start to rip you off ;)

Maybe fully read the comment I'm responding to? The implication is that European countries (and especially Germany) spend an extraordinary amount of tax money on health care and that's why taxes are so high. This is basically wrong from start to finish. You also don't pay half of your wage in taxes in Germany. The chunk that's removed from your gross wage before pay out includes your mandatory employee insurances (health-, pension- and unemployment-insurances), and that's how you end up "losing" about 30% to 45% of your gross salary before pay out (the actual "tax part" is somewhere between 10 and 25% depending on income, marriage status etc...)

> The fucked up part is the forced solidarity

Of course it is forced, it has to be. What's the alternative? Make it voluntary, which immediately will lead to the total cost only being spread across sick people that definitely are going to cost the system money, resulting in an immediate increase in coverage cost, making it unavailable to a large part of the population? Just look at how well removal of the fee for non-coverage under the ACA worked in the US. That's just "let's take health insurance away from poor people" with more steps.

Are you in favor of abolishing car insurance as well? It’s the same principle, pool money, pay out when necessary.

It lets everyone, including those less well off, enjoy relatively low insurance premiums and you get personal mobility in return.

I’m well off, part of the reason I’m well off is because I was lucky enough to be born in a place that provided lots of stability and opportunity (schooling, health care, et al), it’s nice to give back. Sure, there’s flaws and waste in places, but I’ve had a family member go through extensive medical treatment because of cancer and I genuinely wish that level of care and options for everyone, so paying my taxes and health insurance premiums it is!

The word „solidarity“ means here that you empathize with other people and contribute to shared prosperity and success. You share the healthcare system with a lot of people who make the country what it is. Some of them earn less, some earn more, and that‘s ok. With your contributions you make sure that those who bake your wonderful bread, run the public transport or clean the streets in your neighborhood are covered. If you would rather prefer American system with its deficiencies, because you are high earner and don‘t like to share, you can always go there. Dubai is also nice for people with some cash and tolerance to human rights violations.

What is really fucked up about Germany, is that exit to private insurance exists in principle, and our Bundesmimose Friedrich Merz have never used statutory one. The existing system has deteriorated only because nobody in the government is using it and has no clue what people now experience daily.

Well, people would not want to pay more, so free solidarity can not work. The net result will be higher taxes, of course. The question is whether these costs are worth it or not, but not the "let people do what they want" as that won't work - see how US billionaires don't really give up their wealth voluntarily. And now, building a foundation is just an excuse to not give the money to the people. It is for their protection of wealth, not for solidarity.

That is not anti solidarity, I know Afternative für Deutschland voters like to frame it this way but it's not.

I agree with you. People would not complain and happily pay a premium for a really good service. But that’s not the case in Germany.

Younger generation would absolutely end up paying even more in the future to sustain the health costs of aging boomers.

Also the pension scheme in Germany for a lack of better word, is a ponzi scheme. Again, younger generation is paying to sustain the boomers and by the time those young people goes into retirement, they would barely get anything out of what they have paid.

> certain professions like government workers, doctors, etc. have their own health insurance schemes <

Completely WRONG: you are mixing up "job-dedicated" pension schemes like for lawyers or doctors with the healthcare setup - in healthcare, there are only two parties: "public" healthcare ("GKV") and "private" healthcare ("PKV"), these two types are not anyhow related to the job dedicated pension schemes.

Correct is, mostly all politicians, high-earners, docs, lawyers etc. are chosing the "private" insurance version, for (at least until yet) several benefits compared to the ones using the "public" model.

You are allowed to enter the private model above a certain salary, but you are not forced. It may be cheaper for some time, but at least if kids arrive it gets fucking expensive, since in the public model your children are insured for free,while in private mode you have to pay for them.

Also handling private mode insurance is more work.

Sounds really complicated, but at the end of the day as long as everyone has health insurance that's still by definition universal health insurance, right? In particular, having "a group of people that benefits from it even without paying a single euro for it" seems mandatory for it to be truly universal.

It sounds to me like you're envisioning something different from universal healthcare, but it's not clear to me exactly what.

Exactly!