I live in Germany.
Very interesting! Are there any case studies on that?
I was watching a segment on these companies the other day that addressed the importance of small companies, which constitute the backbone of the German economy. They took one such small company and chatted with its founder. He started talking numbers and I believe he said his small company builds tunnel boring machines and had a turnover of about 5 billion euros.
They also mentioned how they're not worried about China because Chinese companies mass produce stuff using German machinery. And how German companies make "the thing that goes into the thing that goes into the thing". Anyway, it was of course an oversimplified CNN-MSNBC-like segment, but it's interesting to see what they consider small company.
We're talking about a nation that had ships 450 feet long and 150 feet wide 600 years ago. If Noah was real, he was probably Chinese, lived in the 15th century, and the animal pairs he took with him were fast robotized arms from Germany.
PS:
Here's a website that I love. http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/
You can look things up by country, by product, etc. What country exports to what other country, and what does it export or import. There's also the "economic complexity index" of each country. Pretty neat.
Exactly. A friend and I were chatting (he's a dental surgeon) and it came up that in dental care, many things that cost in the 2-4k in the US or Europe cost about 200 bucks here (Algeria) - same techniques, same materials, same hygiene standards, etc -.
Naturally, I asked him why there weren't people flocking from Europe (it's about 100 euros round trip from here). He said that even if dental care is cheap, everything around it sucks. He said that neighboring countries built the infrastructure to allow this to be possible (specialized resorts that have deals with clinics, etc). Tourism is thought with this in mind.
He said that if you compare that with our country, there's too much friction for your average European.
On a cost based analysis, it's still worth it. Many Algerians who reside abroad get all their medical/dental care and their children's done here when they visit, but they know the country and have family. They're not in a completely unknown territory.
It's not enough that something is technically possible, there are many parameters (even social parameters) that enter into consideration.
> He said that if you compare that with our country, there's too much friction for your average European.
> On a cost based analysis, it's still worth it.
I'll try to explain why this wouldn't be worth it to me, even if it would cost x100 less for dental care.
I'm in Germany, and I'm obliged to pay for a private health insurer provider (almost €300 per month), even though I'm a healthy late twenties individual. It doesn't matter that I barely use medical or dental services at all, I am obliged to pay that by law, even though I just use it for the occasional checkup, getting my teeth cleaned, etc.
I don't care if my dental work costs €5 or €500, my insurance provider picks up the bill. I don't care at all. In this case, the entity using the service and the entity paying the bill are completely separate.
My free time is very limited, I have a full schedule, working full time, social life, gym, hobbies, etc. I don't really have time to take time off for medical tourism to Algeria, I want to enjoy my free time. There is also the perception issue, I have no idea if I can trust anyone there.
Also, I wouldn't compare dental care costs between the US and Europe. From what I've read, the US is in it's own special price category for a lot of things related to dental/medical expenditures. Look at EpiPen fiasco, Turing Pharmaceutical, and many more. That stuff doesn't happen in Canada, Europe, Australia, or if it does its much rarer than in the US.
In that case you are in a lucky situation due to being privately insured. The vast majority in Germany is in the public system which only pays for the most basic of dental care. If you want more eloberate work or better material you need to pay out of your own pocket (which of course is still much less than in the US).
Dental care combined with a vacation in Poland, the Czech Republic, or Hungary is a thriving market. Some health insurers even cooperate with providers abroad and many doctors there speak German.
Similiar, many people opt for eye laser surgery (which you need to completely pay out of pocket) in Turkey or in-vitro fertilization in the Czech Republic (where a wider range of methods are legal).
I've heard stories from my home country about people going to Poland and other places for dental tourism like you mention, which has the advantage of being in the EU (visa-less travel, some level of trust, likely similar standards).
Whether you become a medical tourist or not likely depends if you are in a public health system or not, and if so, what is covered by the public system and how much you must pay out of pocket to make the travel cost-effective.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-deal-makers-have-germany-...
Herrenknecht?
There was no big secret behind it. It's just that their whole market was like 20 companies worldwide served by maybe 7 providers of which 2-3 actually counted.
Media stories about it talk about doubling storage capacity.
If so, it's a product of US government research.
In line with the topic I'd like to plug Mennekes (which does have a small public relations department and is larger than the companies mentioned above). They supply plugs for practically every electric car.
50 employees, tiny amount of machines they produce, but without them, the world would be far worse as everyone could only eat ice cream in those tasteless paper-like ice cream cones.