The German services union ver.di is staging protest rallies in numerous cities against government plans to streamline the hospital sector. Slogans displayed at rallies are drastic in language, for example: “First the hospital goes, then the coffins come.”
Under the pretext of making the hospital sector “more efficient,” several hundred hospitals will no longer be co-funded, but shut down. Despite government assurances that services will be improved for citizens, Germany would face the opposite, resembling the catastrophic state of the British health sector after the National Health Service “reform” years ago, spurred by Tony Blair. That implies long waiting lists for major surgery, travel over long distances to get to a hospital able to provide specialized treatment of certain illnesses, and other serious drawbacks.
