But that’s not to say that the Bismarck model is without its problems. In fact, Germany shares many healthcare woes with the U.S., and it’s tried some intriguing solutions that Americans might look to, as well.

So, with our healthcare system looking decidedly more German, here’s what we have to look forward to.

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All things considered, it’s good to be a sick German. There are no network limitations, so people can see any doctor they want. There are no deductibles, so Germans have no fear of spending hundreds before their insurance ever kicks in.

There’s also no money that changes hands during a medical appointment. Patients show their insurance card at the doctor’s office, and the doctors' association pays the doctor using money from the sickness funds. "You don’t have to sit at home and sort through invoices or wonder if you overlooked fine print,” Sophia Schlette, a public health expert and a former senior advisor at Berlin’s National Statutory Health Insurance Physicians Association, told me. That insurance card, by the way, is good for hospital visits anywhere in Europe.

Germany is in the middle of the pack among developed countries when it comes to healthcare spending per capita, according to a report released by the Commonwealth Fund last fall.

Commonwealth Fund

But of all of the countries studied, Germans were the most likely to be able to get a same-day or next-day appointment and to hear back from a doctor quickly if they had a question. They rarely use emergency rooms, and they can access doctors after-hours with ease.

Commonwealth Fund

And Germany manages to put its health-care dollars to relatively good use: For each $100 it spends on healthcare, it extends life by about four months, according to a recent analysis in the American Journal of Public Health. In the U.S., one of the worst-performing nations in the ranking, each $100 spent on healthcare resulted in only a couple of extra weeks of longevity.

Then, of course, there are the drawbacks. Since there are no provider networks in Germany, doctors don’t know what other providers patients have seen, so there are few ways to limit repeat procedures. In fact, Germany is facing quantity-control issues similar to America’s, but the U.S. is more of a vanguard in attempting to limit waste. The ACA created Accountable Care Organizations, voluntary groups of doctors and nurses that can share in the savings if they manage to treat Medicare patients more efficiently.

The German government is similarly trying to push more people into “family physician” programs, in which just one doctor would serve as a gatekeeper. But that’s an idea the Germans borrowed from the American HMO model of the 1980s.

And like the U.S., Germany may see a shortage of primary-care doctors in the near future, both because primary-care doctors there don’t get paid as much as specialists, and because entrenched norms have prevented physician assistants from shouldering more responsibility, Schlette said. There are so few nurses available to provide geriatric care that Germans have started importing their own home health aides from Eastern Europe or the Philippines.

The German government is also currently trying to lure more primary care doctors to rural areas, where staffing issues are much worse than in affluent towns and cities—just like in, well, you guessed it.