One of the most-asked questions I get is, “how’s the health insurance in Germany?”

On a related note, when did we all become so boring that health insurance is actually a legitimate topic of conversation?

I reply with a shoulder shrug and comment that it seems about the same as in the US. I pay what seems like way too much money every month and I see a doctor once a year.

There are two types of insurance: public and private.

I selected public insurance because I assumed it was cheaper. Wouldn’t you assume the same?

I also started noticing that when I tried to make doctors’ appointments, I wasn’t able to get them right away. When I did go, I had to sit in a separate, less plush, waiting room.

It wasn’t until I was having a conversation with a colleague about insurance (oh god, I am becoming boring!) that he mentioned private insurance should be cheaper for me than public.

Say WHAT?!

Apparently, it’s based on age and health, and since I’m (relatively) young and healthy, it should be cheaper for me.

So I contacted HR asking if this was true. Of course I got the typical “it’s not that easy” response.

When I met with HR, they told me I needed to talk to an insurance consultant (where do I find one of these?), and then I could choose among providers. I could also get supplementary private coverage for just eyes or teeth, etc. But if I chose to leave public, I could never go back. If I wanted to have a baby, it would have to go on my husband’s insurance. There are a lot of insurance consultants out there, but not a lot who speak English. There are even more providers.

Tons and tons of details that I didn’t know how to process.

I was actually most confused as to why we didn’t have this conversation A YEAR AND A HALF AGO WHEN I MOVED HERE.

So I had a call set up with an insurance consultant who spoke English. He questioned me about my health history, my current health, and then he asked me a bunch of questions about my preferences, which he put into a database to filter down to a handful of providers for me to choose from.

The first question was if I wanted my own hospital room with one bed, a shared room with two beds, or a shared room with six or more beds.

“When?”

I then explained that type of hospital bed was not really number one on my priority list. That I really just wanted to pay less each month, get an appointment in less than two weeks when I called a doctor, and sit in the waiting room with the red velvet chairs.

He asked me questions like, “If you were in a really bad accident and you were going to lose your leg and you could stay in Frankfurt with a 10% chance of keeping the leg or go to Munich with an 80% chance of losing the leg, would you pay more for your insurance?”

I AM NOT JOKING.

After our “evaluation” of my preferences, he sent me a 114 page pdf in German (first page pictured above). He told me he was sorry, but he was sending the info in German and I could easily use Google translate to figure it out.

I don’t know if you use Google translate, but you cannot easily use Google translate to figure it out.

So my weekend’s going to revolve around picking a provider from this list. Which will probably be me closing my eyes, spinning around and pointing.

I have to decide before November 1 in order for it to take effect Jan 1. The pressure’s on…