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- "Wir benutzen die kostenlose …
"Wir benutzen die kostenlose Krankenversicherung."
Translation:We are making use of the free health insurance.
49 Comments
128
Me as well. Is there even such thing as a free health insurance in Germany? Seems to me either you pay for it (or your employer deducts the fee from your salary) or you get fined.
In any case, a very useful word to practice :)
469
as a native german speaker I can say:
If you say: "we use the free...", then you can say "wir benutzen...".
But if you say: "we make use of the...", then you have to say: "Wir machen Gebrauch von..."..
B.t.w.: the first alternative sounds pretty bad.
1421
They used to call it "assurance maladie" in Ontario (Canada), but changed it some time ago to assurance santé. (In English, I think it has always been "health insurance".) In Québec, they still call it "assurance maladie". I guess it's whether you consider it insurance against something, or for something.
I think "medical care" should be accepted. Health coverage isn't "insurance" in the same sense as house or car insurance. Even if the term "insurance" is used in German, that doesn't make it so. Whether or not you agree with my take on this, though, there are synonyms for "health insurance" in English, such as "health coverage", which at present (Dec. 2020) is not accepted by Duolingo.
"No cost" translates the same as 'kostenlose.' Thus, DuoLingo got the sentence correct in German.
However, the supposed 'correct' answer in English is wrong.
It should actually be: "We use the no cost health insurance." An alternative is: "We use the no-cost health insurance."
Whoever is paying for someone else's coverage, it is certainly not "free" to those payers. But it is at 'no cost' to the individual who takes advantage of it.
In English, we can say "health insurance", or if the context is clear, simply "insurance". The reason we need context is because there are other types of insurance, which I'm sure you know.
Krankenversicherung is simply a compound noun, with the second half being the word "insurance": "Versicherung"; thus if the context is clear, you can simply say insurance in German.
"We are using the free health insurance" is good English. I don't understand what your alternative suggestion is exactly. Perhaps you mean "make use of"? "We are making use of the free health insurance" is also good English. Both sentences mean the same thing and should be equally acceptable. The same is true of "We use the free health insurance," which is the most literal translation of the German.
1492
This 'make use' doesn't sound right to me. I see it more as using something that otherwise can't be used. As in 'I am making use of this junk someone left on the kerb'. I don't see how you can make use of health insurance. Its something you have or don't have.