The European healthcare systems are the best in the world.
You can say what you like about the European social and healthcare systems: no one has to fear being denied a life-saving operation because they can’t afford it. That’s different in the much-praised liberal American system.
That’s how a system built on exorbitant taxes and compulsory contributions is marketed – a system of legalized bribery with life-threatening gaps in care.
Let’s take a look at how healthcare in Austria really works:
A 79-year-old man from Salzburg died in March 2025 after a tear in his aorta, because the University Hospital Salzburg had no second emergency surgical team available. Although the life-threatening condition was quickly recognized, the hospital’s only emergency team was already performing another operation. The patient was transferred by helicopter to Linz four hours later, where he died shortly before the surgery.
A 55-year-old mother of two from the Rohrbach district (Upper Austria) died on October 14, 2025, at Rohrbach-Berg Hospital after being admitted with severe chest pain and diagnosed with a rupture of the main artery (aorta). Although an immediate operation in a specialized clinic was necessary, none of the hospitals contacted could accept the patient.
Several hospitals – including Kepler University Hospital Linz, the Brothers of Mercy Hospital Linz, Wels Hospital, the university hospitals in Salzburg and St. Pölten, and Passau Hospital – reportedly refused admission due to lack of capacity.
At the same time, the Minister of Health is quarreling with the Medical Association over whether to cap the fees charged by “private-choice doctors.” Private-choice doctors are, for clarity, those who do not work under contract with the public insurance system but charge normal private fees, which are only partially and pre-definedly reimbursed.
A ridiculous discussion. Private-choice doctors should, of course, be free to charge as much as they want.
The real problem is the dual role of many of these doctors. They are often senior or head physicians in state hospitals, where they control the allocation of treatment and surgery appointments, as well as access to publicly funded infrastructure.
But if it turns out that such hospital doctors grant their private patients preferential access to surgeries and other publicly financed medical services in exchange for economic benefits, that is nothing less than bribery – and therefore a case for the public prosecutor.
Going to the chief physician’s private practice, paying a hefty sum, and getting treated ahead of everyone else in a publicly funded operating room sounds clever. In reality, it means that anyone who cannot afford the additional private fees ends up being pushed down the waiting list despite paying mandatory insurance contributions – and risks serious harm to their health.
Where is the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office when it’s actually needed? Everyone knows about these abuses – people talk about them openly – but everyone just shrugs: “That’s how it is. Two-tier medicine – what can you do?”
All a misunderstanding! No corruption here.
The consultations with private-choice doctors, who grant privileged access to infrastructure – including preferential scheduling – are done through supplementary insurance. Part of the payments for these insurances flows to the hospitals and is supposedly reinvested in infrastructure. Bribery followed by “active repentance” – or even full restitution, as it were.
What an absurd argument!
How can the health insurance fund, which represents the community of mandatory contributors, allow this game to continue? It collects contributions while knowing that its members are effectively second-class patients when it really matters.
The trick with partial funding: the costs are too high, the contributions too low. The originally promised principle of “those who pay decide – that is, the solidarity community” simply doesn’t work in practice.
The reality is this:
Those who can add a little extra on top of their compulsory contributions are the ones who truly “decide.” Only they receive timely and reliable treatment.
The doctors who control the system’s infrastructure love this setup. After all, from the “special class” funds that are supposedly used to finance additional operating rooms, a few euros end up in their own pockets in the form of private-choice fees.
The health insurance fund, which manages the mandatory contributions, secretly loves it too – since it can spend more of the contribution money on its own administration.
It has no interest in taking over the full financing of doctors and hospitals.
Neither do the providers of supplementary insurance or their long-time customers – though some cynics might call them “bribery savings plans.”
A widening gap between ideal and reality. No corruption, of course.
Just a system that takes your money, pretends it’s enough, and – when it really counts – merely pretends to provide reliable help.
With frequently fatal consequences.
That’s socialism.
