I already recently made a post about the doctor strike event, however, I have to say there are more balance issues around health care in this game than that one crisis. I tried Germany, and couldn’t get rid of the hospital overcrowding issue. I noticed that Germany didn’t start with a state health service program (really? does Germany not have this?), and thought that creating a new system to add more hospitals, without defunding my health care vouchers program, which I had already padded, would help to deal with the overcrowding issue.
What I got was a doctor strike, yeah, they went on strike as soon as I added a public system to the subsidized private system, as well as the public system tearing into the private system, resulting in the private system shedding it’s crowding reduction benefit faster than the public system was taking it on, and not reducing the cost of the voucher system. Oh, and now due to the doctor strike parents hate me and there’s a big health negative even thought the health care vouchers are still being funded.
This touches on several issues at once. The cost of health care vouchers should scale with how much people are using private health care. The public system should not tear down the private system faster than it is even setting itself up, and ultimately more money spent on health care should result in less crowded hospitals. The only counter to that last statement would be to say that reducing health care spending wouldn’t worsen the crowding, which I hope nobody is going to take this there. Also, why is hospital overcrowding so difficult to get rid of? Real governments struggle with this one because they don’t want to spend what it would cost to fix it out of concern over a possible debt crisis. In my case, I’ve said damn the budget, get the hospitals working, and I still don’t have working hospitals.
I have also fixed many other health related issues, eliminating the respiratory illness and obesity crises that I started with, as well as pinning health to the top of the chart. All up, this seems to only have a marginal impact on health care demand.
To wrap up, please rebalance health care systems and health crises.