[yummyfajitas]

I've only spent about 6 hours in Germany, so I can't speak about Germany. But in many places - the US and UK, for example - it's often quite difficult to get medical work done simply by paying money.

For example, in the US many doctors refused to treat me - I was later told by a doctor that this is for regulatory reasons. US hospitals are famous for not providing a price before treatment, and often trying to sneak non-insured items onto the bill. Compare the expereinces here (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/us/drive-by-doctoring-sur... ) with mine (https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2015/medical_tourism.html ).

I've had similar difficulties in the UK - it's mostly NHS or get out of town. (My issues in the UK were minor, so I decided to just wait until I reached India to get them fixed.)

[deng]

Interesting. I didn't think it was a problem to be treated when you put cash on the table. But maybe you have to be very rich. At least in Germany, some hospitals/doctors in Munich are pretty known for courting rich patients from the middle east, and those surely don't depend on some insurance...

[yummyfajitas]

Medicine is always wonderful if you are a petro-monarchy prince. I'm just a regular guy.

Anecdotally, I've been told that a lot of middle Eastern medicine is corrupt and low quality. I ran into a lot of gulf state medical tourists in India who told me this (obviously a biased sample).