Oddly enough, it seems like tech is closer to doctors in Germany than in the US. Just about every Hausarzt (general practitioner) and every internist and ob/gyn has an ultrasound machine in their practice and uses it themselves. When I've been in the emergency room, the doctor does the ultrasound, not a technician, though nurses set up and run EKGs.

And it's all amazingly cheap compared to the US, even as a private pay patient. An overnight hospital stay is about 200 EUR, including the attending doctor's fee.

That's interesting. In the US, these things go for $10K or so. Maybe they lease them? At $500/mo if it got used every day, that's be under $20 per use.

No idea, but there's a lively enough market that I've seen older ultrasound machines at veterinarians' offices.

Vet services, by the way, do cost approximately as much as they do in the US, at least for birds.

Yeah, in the tiny town I grew up in we only had a single hospital and still had a (private) radiography clinic that was shared between the public hospital and private surgeries.