German healthcare access getting worse [seriously]

If you are older than 20 or so, you may have this notion of Germany as a great socially advanced country.

A place where everybody has six weeks of paid vacation that come with an extra vacation bonus payment to ensure you have vacation spending money, a distinguished high-quality healthcare systems open to all for a small fee.
You know, you sprain an ankle, you get sick pay, and then your smiling physician will send you off on several weeks of paid, free rehab to get the ankle moving just right. 

It's the past, baby.

Gone.

Germany has joined the race to the bottom, and not only are there people without health coverage, their numbers are increasing without great media attention other than one yearly headline when the statistics are published.

As someone who was close to uninsured US citizens, the fact that people go without coverage is not very interesting. What is alarming, though, is that there is no network of free volunteer clinics in Germany, or most other European countries for that matter. An accident followed by a 50 000 dollar hospital bill is no longer an "only in America" feature.

It is happening right now in one of the four or five most advanced economies on the planet.

How do we know the numbers of uninsured people are up?

Listen to doctors. They will tell you if you know how to broach the subject.

With the uptick in the numbers of uninsured, healthcare fraud is up, too. Doctors report people borrowing insurance cards from family members or friends is up, too. Since January 2015, these cards have a photo of the insured person, which makes it more difficult to pull off a free visit.

In theory, Germans in need can go to their job center or EDD or to local government and enroll for social services. In practice, it is estimated that some 5 million Germans who are eligible for state assistance never apply.

Why?

Because the means testing performed in modern day Germany is done with the same sort of thoroughness and depth you have heard about in German history.

And often with the same friendliness on the part of the government employees.