I'm a celebrity, let me in!

From our Hospital Trip series.

We simply had to start a subseries as an homage to our passengers and to the hospital employees and patients. Recently, TheEditor's gender neutral bubbly self accomplished something not successfully done for decades, no one is sure about the last time it happened, but they all agree on "several decades ago".

It came to pass as follows: TheEditor was visiting someone as a nurse approached. When she was about to pass, TheEditor said: "So, how are you doing today?"
The nurse froze in her track, shook her head and said: "Nobody ever asks us how we are doing", all the while standing perfectly still. She collected herself, broke into a smile and continued her way with a "thank you".

The I'm a celebrity, let me in! episode took place on the last trip for a friend with a bad foot. While she was being treated, TheEditor sat on the few chairs in the hallway. In hopped, on one leg, a tanned burly 30-ish German with a sidekick about the same age. The tanned prospective ankle or foot patient - he was in shorts and his bare leg looked perfect - gave the sidekick instructions on cleaning up the construction site they had been on, then sat down with a sigh as his companion disappeared through the automatic door.

"Hi, hurt yourself?"

"Yes, at a work site", the new arrival responded, glancing at his iPhone.

"Ah, accidents, but looks like you have one good one."

"Guess so, wonder why they make me wait, I have private health insurance", the man said, thumbing his iPhone.

"They are treating someone. Private insurance won't get you in faster, it may get you better treatment and a handshake by the chief of surgery."

"Hm."

TheEditor then steered the conversation into easier waters, about the weather, about other people's misfortunes, and so on.

Health insurance in Germany is dominated by large semi-public, non-profit, often profession or industry based insurers, and there is a smaller competing fully private insurance sector. This for profit sector has traditionally insured the well to do, upper managers (there is an annual minimum income regular employees need to make before they can switch to the private for profit sector).

The for profit insurers go after above average income young clients, which means they can charge lower premiums. The non-profit insurers charge a percentage of the income, which makes their premiums higher for young people and, by comparison, lower for older customers.  The for profit insurance premiums have traditionally seen a steep rise with the age of the insured, often eating up half or more of their social security or fixed income payments.

On the branding side, the for-profit companies have been good at presenting their service as "better", "speedier", with "upgrades" to a two person room instead of one with three patients, or a visit by the professor at a big city teaching hospital.

The burly German waited exactly as long as anybody else would have waited to see the surgeon. And the chief of surgery was out on his lunch break anyway, which he interrupts only in a life and death situation.