German health care reform: the next steps

From the U.S. perspective, the German health care system offers much to be desired: universal access, moderate costs, and freedom of choice. The Germans consider their health care system to be in crisis, however, because the mechanisms on which they currently rely for financing and paying for health care, as well as the structures through which medical care is delivered, seem increasingly less viable. Germany has recently adopted modest reforms to partially address these problems. For longer term solutions, however, some in Germany are looking to U.S. managed care models, for better or for worse.