Always bums me out a bit when I read about health insurance providers fighting tooth and nail to prevent or delay improvements in patient care.
Insurance is a bet. You look at the odds and price things accordingly so you can cover the occasional big payout with the premiums from people who don't "win" so to speak. Playing with the lives and health of people to try to skew the bottom line one way or the other is fundamentally a stupid human practice.
Government should provide some basic health services to protect the health of the nation as a whole, just like government tends to provide fire fighting services because letting one fool burn his own home down can burn down a lot more than just his home.
It's a complicated topic and a pet peeve of mine. This approach to trying to keep people healthy is deeply flawed.
Edit: Though I'm really not sure what your comment has to do with this article, to be honest.
I agree that it's a weird business to be in (and certainly the US has not figured out the best approach), but this article is about Germany, and generally I think we strike the right balance here. Not in every detail, there is still a lot of room for improvement (too many insurances, too little competition between them, some questionable decisions about reimbursement) - but I wouldn't dare to claim that I could consistently make better decisions.
People make health choices every minute of every day and the landscape of health insurance is rapidly evolving due to the ability to track biometrics with wearables, among other things.
I'm thrilled to see this article. It seems like really good news for people with paralysis.
Health Insurance companies (especially non-totally-private ones) have an ugly battle of balancing the costs with the good of the many and not the individual.