German politicians are fond of saying, “Work must be worth it.” But ever more people who work full-time need state benefits. And the new minimum wage hike is seen as disappointing.

  • velanox@feddit.org
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    7 hours ago

    Competiton is always good for the consumer, sure, but too much of it is wasted money. It should be maybe 5-6 Krankenkassen, maybe bump that to 8-9, but this should be in no case a double-digit number. This is in my eyes the sweet spot for both preventing the formation of a cartell and simultaneously offering a wide range of services.

    Just think about it, the current 96 companies all have to have their own C-suite, most likely several hundreds of employees - for what? This is a huge waste.

    • HaiZhung@feddit.org
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      6 hours ago

      About 95% of the money spent by the public health insurance company is „Leistungsausgaben“, I.e., paying out people for health related costs.

      You can’t optimize that away, even when combining the companies. The remaining 5% is overhead. Having worked in a big company, I can tell you that big companies are not that much more efficient than small companies. In fact, the overhead is often even larger since there is lots more cross-communication involved between departments. In the end, everyone that is now a CEO would be an SVP instead, and barely anything would change.