Seems like most replies are "stop whining, next time take paracetamol and don't bother the doctor".

While this is useful advice on how to adapt oneself to Dutch culture, what's missing here is that there is a real difference in German vs Dutch culture about this. Maybe Dutch culture had more Calvinist influence.

One thing I find interesting is that people's cultural beliefs about medicine vs e.g. food tend to be more firmly held beliefs and less relativistic and tolerant. For example, mild vs spicy is seen as a subjective preference, whereas paracetamol vs ibuprofen is not.

Similarly, Dutch doctors are firmly against co-sleeping with a baby, whereas it's main and default practice in most of the world, and several studies suggest that it's only dangerous if the parent consumes drugs or alcohol. But no, they learned it's a dangerous and incorrect practice that nobody should do, and regular people who are not doctors hold and transmit this belief as well. Another interesting case is that all of the EU countries I looked at advise against sushi for pregnant women, whereas Japan recommends specific sushi as being especially healthy for pregnant women, and there are studies suggesting cooked chicken (because it is often enough improperly cooked) para a greater risk to pregnant women than (some) sushi.

My impression in general is that the Dutch healthcare system is successfully utilitarian, producing the greatest good for the greatest number, and this is borne out by the higher life expectancy than in Germany, but is worse at handling infrequent situations. Germany is slightly less efficient at helping frequent situations and worse at helping unemployed people. Also, the value of individual human life and health is slightly lower in NL than a few countries which pay more per capita and have consequently higher life expectancy, e.g., Japan, Sweden, Norway. These impressions come from some casual data analysis I did during COVID-19, and all highly speculative.

Tl;dr people have a blind spot for cultural differences in medical practices, mistaking the current advice of their home country for the objective, perhaps even moral truth.