All this talk of Nazis and health care has me wondering what Germany’s health care system was actually like under Hitler?
Beyond the well-known programs of euthanasia and horrific medical experiments conducted by the likes of Josef Mengele, what has health care like for various segments of the German population? Who paid for what?
Personally I don’t know, and I’m fairly sure the rightwingers accusing Obama of instituting a “Nazi” policy have no idea either. I find it depressing how the right wing of American politics seem to equate all of their bugbears as being the same: if you’re a communist, you’re a Nazi; if you’re for abortion, you’re an atheist; if you support universal healthcare, you support terrorism, etc.
But I’ve been wondering about this question myself so I’m ‘upping’ the thread hoping you get some answers. 
I did find this and this, but nothing that talks about how ordinary Germans received and paid for medical care.
In Germany at the time (putting aside things Nazi inventions like the Euthanasia program), there were three laws that covered most people, all of which predated the Nazis…they all dated from Bismarck’s reforms in the 1880s.
The first was the Health Insurance Bill of 1883, as amended. That set up local bureaus that provided health insurance for almost all employees at a one-third/two-third basis…employers would pay for a third of the insurance cost, and employees for two thirds. The law also set prices for medical treatment and provided thirteen weeks of Sick Pay.
The second was the Accident Insurance Bill of 1884, as amended. This replaced the health insurance program starting on the fourteenth week, paying for medical treatment, and providing a pension of up to 2/3 of the person’s wages if he was permanently disabled and couldn’t find other work.
The third was the Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889, which provided a pension annuity for all workers once they reached the age of 70. It also provided insurance to the permanently disabled (the previous bill had given them a pension, but no insurance).
In all three of these programs the insurance costs were partially underwritten by the national government and the various German states.
The Nazis didn’t really have a health care policy. They continued the policy that had started with Bismarck of a government run insurance plan that initially only covered government workers, later expanded to cover other sectors of the economy such as railroad workers. After World War I, it also was expanded to the poor and unemployed. The only real change under the Nazis was allowing people who made more to pay to be in the plan.
So, indeed, the health care policy under the Nazis was a quasai-socialist one, but the Kaiser was more to blame than Hitler. I’d love to see someone show up at a town hall meeting with a poster of Obama wearing a pointy Kaiser hat.
“Health care” was a much different animal back then. Far fewer drugs and devices. Much less expensive.
As for the Nazis, remember that they were the National Socialists.
So? We’ve also got The People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Anyone think those names are accurate?
Whether we think these names are accurate is not really the point. The Nazis, or at least some of them, did think that the “socialist” in “National Socialist” meant something, which is why they were quite keen on, e.g., central planning of the economy through “four-year plans” and the like. So we shouldn’t find it amazing if they took things like health and welfare quite seriously.
But, as pointed out, as regards health care, the work had already been largely done for them by that raving socialist Otto von Bismarck, and they didn’t feel the need to do more than tweak the system. I’ve no idea, though, what the level of cover was like. Did it focus on work-related injuries or was it comprehensive with respect to all medical issues? Did it just cover hospital care, or did it pay for G.P. services? Did it cover the cost of drugs? I dunno.
OK, so for the average German in Nazi Germany: employees would take out public health insurance plans with prices set by the government, and for which the national government would pitch in some of the costs. Then employers would pay for 1/3 of the rest of the costs, and employees would pay for 2/3?
Get sent to the Eastern Front at 19 or 20.
No need for elder care or retirement planning!
The prices were set less by the government and more by existing insurance companies…the “sickness funds” that existed before Bismarck’s legislation. But remember, these funds weren’t for profit. They were mutual aid cooperatives run by their members, and one of the thing Bismarck’s bill did, by expanding the people who these groups covered was put union representatives on the boards of the sickness funds.
The sickness funds would then contract with local doctors and hire them. (eventually, things would change, after a series of doctor’s strikes and the creation of a doctors union, which led to the doctors themselves getting representation on the sickness fund committees.)
The Lebensborn program did have some elements of healthcare involved - pregnant women were given treatment and maternity leave, and some of the orphans of war were taken care of.
Of course it was really a eugenics plan that was probably more evil than good - to qualify, one had to appear racially pure by their standards, many of the ‘orphans’ were kidnapped from countries Germany had invaded, and some women were coerced into becoming pregnant. It was also intended to indoctrinate the children with Nazi values.
(I mention this because I’ve seen claims that because Obama mentions wanting to provide healthcare for children, it must be just like the Lebensborn program.)
Let’s remember, too, that Nazi Germany in stripping Jews of citizenship also effectively blocked them from medical care. In particular, laws preventing Jews from practicing medicine and preventing Aryan doctors from treating Jews accomplished this aim.
In the other thread there were several very good quotes and info about this. Basically, the Nazis added the “socialist” to pull in the large numbers of workers, who were either communist or socialist to a large amount in the Weimar Republic.
The basic reason for the Nazis not to mess with the Health care system was that it would have caused an uproar.
As for how the Nazis treated the workers: they did away with the unions, replacing them with more-or-less mandatory Nazi job organisations. They also quickly raised the weekly hour time in preparation for the war and abolished other worker protection laws during the war.
But they used a lot of “bread and circus” programs and were much, much better at PR than the Weimar Republic. During the 20s, after Germany recovered from WWI, and before the Great Depression hit, there was a brief period of prosperity for the lower classes unlike before, but people didn’t credit the Republic for it. Of the major 20 newspapers during that time, for example, about 2 wrote favourably about democracy, the rest had vicious editiorals how bad things were because of democracy, and how returning to monarchy/communism would make things better (like Fox or CNN, I think).
By contrast, Hitler and the Nazis were good at stealing ideas and ascribing them to themselves: Hitler didn’t start the Autobahn, but uninformed people still think so. The Hitlerjugend (youth organisations) took many elements from the boy scouts and the Wandervogel movement (an early variant of Hippie protest by walking around in groups and wearing differnt clothes), and added political indoctrination.
For the first time ever, children of blue collar workers could learn to ride horses, motorbikes or even fly a plane (in prepartion for the war, of course - the Kosmolsoze, the Soviet youth groups in the USSR, were doing the same thing in the 30s, learning flying with wooden planes - the famous Night Witches in WWII came from that program), and get out of the small neighborhood to outdoor adventure trips.
For the adults, there was the KdF - Kraft durch Freude (strenght through joy) program, where poor workers who had never left their city could go on cruises (simple ships, sure), or spend time at the Ostsee/ Nordsee - where just two generations ago the rich and noble elite had spent summer vacations in exclusive and expensive resorts, now people’s hotels were built (like in Soviet countries, too). This of course convinced the masses that Nazis improved life. (NOTE: I personally hate the Nazis and don’t agree with their philosophy or actions at all. I only present this examples to show how they used propaganda and PR to sway the masses to like them, while doing their real agenda behind the scenes, not because I endorse this.)
I don’t quite understand the question. Do you pay money for an insurance that only covers part of the medical costs??? What’s the use in that? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Without looking up details on the system back then, going by how it’s today, because that makes sense:
Work related accidents are covered by Unfallversicherung (Accident insurance) - doctor visits, hospitals, medication, and pay during the weeks you’re laid up to feed you and your family.
Disability pension if you are permanently disabled because of work is also covered somewhere.
If you are ill not from accident - flu or whatever - the insurance pays the doctors visit and medication. If you need an operation, the insurance pays the hospital. If you have a small child that needs looking after during your illness, you can apply for a household help, but I don’t know when that was introduced. You can also apply for a Kur - a rehabilitation stay at a Bath or the sea to get well from a long-time illness, or for mothers to recover away from the stress of a family.
In the US, there’s different kinds of health care programs a person can have. A person can have a program that just pays for hospitalization, or just for medical care, or just for dental treatments, or just for prescription drugs, or so on, and it’s not uncommon for a company not to provide dental insurance, even though they provide other forms of medical insurance, for instance. I think that was why he was asking the question.
I’m pretty sure there are major differences between the way the system worked then and now.
I don’t understand what this means. Today, when an employee starts work, he tells him employee which of the Krankenkassen - health insurance companies - he wants to be a member: the offical one is AOK = Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (General community Health insurance), and there are the Ersatzkassen = alternative insurances, like Barmer, TKK (Techniker for technicans), etc.
So if Smith wants to be insured with the Barmer, and Meier wants to be insured with AOK, the employer sends the combined* payment to the insurance company.
With regards to what the insurance companies cover: There are no different “plans”, because over 90% of what a company covers is prescribed by law for all public insurance companies. The different companies - Barmer, AOK, TKK etc. - compete with each other for the additional coverage, like homeopathy, acupuncture, special programs for specific illnesses, or bonus programs (my company offers money back if I participate in so many screenings and prevention measures per year).
Real private companies offer additional coverage: for dentists, because only part of teeth is covered, for glasses, for private rooms in hospitals instead of 2 or 4 patients in a room, a special option to consult the Head Doctor in a hospital etc.
For people who feel that the normal, legal insurance doesn’t adequatly cover them, they can take out additional coverage, dependant on their health, with fixed amount rates.
Huh? No. Why would they? Unless you mean that the employer can take his part off as part of the wage cost, like other expenses? Or do you mean that the state pays for universities where Doctors are educated, and schools for nurses? That’s not special for medicine, though, but for all fields.
I’m a bit surprised by the 1/3 - 2/3 relation - as I said, today it’s 50% each. But yes, the overall percentage is split between employer and employee for health insurance. (Accident insurance is paid solely by the employer - which makes sense, because it’s his duty and possibility to prevent them).
They were going to a have a terrific free cost-efficient universal coverage plan in Nazi Germany, only people kept denouncing it in the Reichstag as “Rooseveltian”.
From my perspective, that’s beyond bizarre. The first laws about health insurance - during Bismarck - established the basics that insured people have a right to treatment by doctors, medication and treatment in hospitals (the law calls this explicitly the right to receive services - as opposed to receiving money).
Actually, the basic system wasn’t changed that drastically. From a quick search, the major changes from the old system under und during the Nazi time were:
the Health insurance companies were restructured and lost their indepence (like other industries)
pensioners were included in the public health insurance. (A short german overview of the changes in the Public health insurance system is here.)
The basic established premise of the right to receive services and payment by fixed percentage wasn’t changed.
But you didn’t need the Lebensborn programme for that! Maternity care was already included in the first Bismarck law, and further laws only expanded, not reduced, the services and scope of what was covered.
Orphans of war were a different story, I suppose, but the Lebensborn only targeted Aryan children, while the social state already had orphanages before. They probably weren’t very good - SOS children’s villages do a better job with the family-like atmosphere - but oprhans didn’t starve in the streets before the Nazis.
The biggest blow, whether to orphanages or Health insurance or unemployment insurance, was the deflation during the great depression, where all money laid back was lost and devalued, which bancrupted among others also the health insurance companies, but that wasn’t really the fault of the system or of the democracy.
This link might help als:
