Germany is a rich country, despite the financial crisis and its global consequences. It offers the third most expensive healthcare system in the world - after the USA and the Netherlands1. Nevertheless, people here are not getting any older than in countries with much cheaper systems, such as that in Sweden. Life expectancy at birth was 80.3 years in Germany in 2009; it was higher in 13 European countries, with the highest in Switzerland at 82.3 years2. It is undisputed that progress costs money and innovations do not always have to make sense in the long term - at least at the beginning of the introduction this cannot always be estimated precisely. But here the problem is completely different: It is not the innovations that make the system so expensive, although that is often claimed and is therefore viewed particularly critically, but rather the uncontrolled use of techniques and processes that are often already outdated.

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