We never thought we would read something like this in a major German publication. Not after the years of Greece’s economic crisis, when many Greeks felt that much of the German press treated the country less as a struggling European partner than as a cautionary tale. And yet there it was in FOCUS: Vasilis Asvestopoulos arguing, for a German readership, that he would rather be a patient in Greece than in Germany.
For Greeks, the sentence lands with a strange mix of satisfaction and caution. Satisfaction, because Greece is rarely credited for what works. Caution, because anyone who has spent time inside Greek hospitals knows that the story is never that simple.
Asvestopoulos’ argument is not easy to dismiss. He points to lower costs, simpler access, digital tools, preventive screening, and a more direct relationship between doctors and patients. In his telling, Greece’s health system may be poorer, but it often feels less bureaucratic and more human than Germany’s.
There is truth in that. OECD data from 2025 show Germany spending $9,365 per person on health, compared with $3,607 in Greece, both measured in U.S. dollars adjusted for purchasing power. Germany spends far more. That does not automatically mean patients feel better served. A rich system can still be slow, layered, impersonal, and difficult to navigate. A poorer one can sometimes feel more direct because there are fewer walls between the patient and the doctor.
But this is where the argument needs to become more honest. When a doctor in Greece gives a patient a mobile number, that can feel deeply reassuring. It can also mean the system is relying on unpaid availability. When a hospital doctor, nurse, or specialist fills the gaps with personal sacrifice, that is not only a sign of humanity. It is also a sign that the structure itself is asking too much from the people inside it.
That tension is the real subject here. Greece has built parts of a public system that deserve respect. Through myHealth and the national electronic health record, citizens can access information such as electronic prescriptions, referrals, and medical history. The “Prolamvano” cardiovascular prevention program also offers free screenings to millions of AMKA holders aged 30 to 70, including both insured and uninsured residents.
The FOCUS piece also fits into a broader change in German-language coverage of Greece. Handelsblatt has asked what Germany can learn from Greece, especially on reform and administrative modernization, describing Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis arriving in Berlin not as a supplicant but as a sought-after source of reform advice.
German political figures have made similar points. After a visit to Athens, Hessian Minister-President Boris Rhein said Germany could learn from Greece on administrative digitalization, noting that Greece had moved quickly under the same European data-protection rules Germany also faces. “Greece shows how consistent digitalization can succeed,” he said, adding that Greece could be “a real model.”
The economic numbers help explain the shift. Greece remains heavily indebted, but the direction has changed. Reuters reported in April 2026 that Greece’s public debt is expected to fall to about 137 percent of GDP by the end of 2026, down from 145.9 percent in 2025, potentially leaving Italy as the eurozone’s most indebted country. The same report noted that Greece’s debt had peaked at 209.4 percent of GDP in 2020.
Greeks can allow themselves a moment of satisfaction over that. An ordinary Greek reader might even smile at the reversal. If a German debate that once treated Greece as Europe’s problem case is now looking to Greece for lessons, that says something about both countries. But satisfaction should not become mythmaking. A flattering comparison from abroad can still miss what people at home live with every day.
Our own view is more complicated. In Greece, things that should be simple can sometimes feel impossible. A basic appointment, a public-service request, or a piece of paperwork may become a test of patience. Then, just as suddenly, something that should be impossible gets done right away because someone answers the phone, takes responsibility, or cuts through the usual layers. That contradiction is part of the country’s reality, and it is exactly what outsiders often miss.
One columnist’s preference for Greek care over German care is a valuable personal testimony, not proof that one system is better than the other. His experience may reflect the doctors he knows, the kind of care he needs, the places where he receives treatment, and the fact that he can compare both countries from a position many patients do not share. A patient with a trusted doctor’s mobile number experiences the system differently from someone waiting months for an appointment or paying privately because the public route is too slow.
That is the part Greeks know well. Public hospitals can still feel worn down. Emergency rooms still leave families waiting for hours. Relatives still sit beside hospital beds because the system quietly assumes someone will. And when public access exists in theory but not quickly enough in practice, private bills often fill the gap.
OECD data on Greece underline that caution. Only 27 percent of people in Greece were satisfied with the availability of quality health care, compared with an OECD average of 64 percent. The same country note found that 12.1 percent of people in Greece reported unmet needs for health care, compared with an OECD average of 3.4 percent.
The World Health Organization reported in 2025 that out-of-pocket payments for health care in Greece lead to catastrophic health spending in nearly 10 percent of households, hitting low-income families hardest. That fact belongs in the same conversation as digital progress and preventive screening. Otherwise, praise becomes another distortion.
This is also the harder question that Germany and Greece should both ask. Germany may have lost some of the relational quality that Greece still preserves because larger, richer systems often become more formal, more regulated, and more distant. But if Greece modernizes without protecting that human contact, will it eventually lose the same thing? And if it preserves that contact only by expecting doctors and nurses to remain endlessly available, is that really a model or just another form of exhaustion?
The answer is not to choose between German bureaucracy and Greek improvisation. Greece needs the digital tools, the prevention programs, and the administrative speed it has begun to build. It also needs enough staff, better pay, shorter waits, stronger public capacity, and less reliance on families and private payments to fill the gaps. That is easy to write and much harder to fund, especially in a country still judged by debt targets, fiscal discipline, and the memory of what happens when public spending becomes politically suspect.
That is why Asvestopoulos’ article is useful. It notices something real. Greece has done things Germany should study. It has built practical public tools under pressure. It has, in many places, preserved a more direct and personal form of care. It deserves credit for that, especially after the contempt it absorbed during the crisis years.
But the final test of a health system is not whether it impresses a columnist comparing Germany and Greece. It is what happens to the patient with no connections, no extra money, no private insurance, no relative making calls, and no doctor’s mobile number saved in the phone.
If Greece wants its health system to remain humane, it cannot keep asking exhausted doctors, nurses, families, and patients to be the safety net.