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Discount agreements between pharmaceutical companies and health insurance funds have become an established standard in the German healthcare system just two years after the implementation of the German Healthcare Modernization Act (GKV-WSG). While the discount rate was still at 27.2 percent in January 2008, by May 2009 every second prescription was discounted (48.9 percent). Regarding expenditures (based on pharmacy retail prices – AVP), the discount rate […]
01.08.2009
Marion Caspers-Merk (Member of the German Bundestag), Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health
01.08.2009
With the founding of the IQWiG 5 years ago, the legislator pursued the purpose of being able to further postpone rationing in the health care system by using funds more rationally. In order to have a decision-making basis that is independent of industry in particular, IQWiG should evaluate therapies independently from a specialist perspective. Meanwhile, the drug assessment of the Institute itself is in the public criticism, it tendentious. A not medical, but legal assessment of IQWiG's drug assessment practice actually shows discrepancies between the legal requirements and assessment practice, particularly with regard to the definition of the order and the choice of method.
01.08.2009
The “National Cancer Plan” from BMG, DKH and DKG reads like a 5-year plan to generate enormous needs, especially in the area of medication, to ensure that the increasing amounts of substances in the “oncological drug market” are supplied to a sufficiently increasing number of “consumers”. and that they are also prepared to pay the prices demanded by the product manufacturers, no matter how high, without ever being able to receive proof of benefit. A national cancer plan that serves the well-being of the individual affected and the population as a whole must pursue the opposite goal of the growth of disease and suffering: it must reduce the risk of disease, reduce the burden of disease and lead to a reduction in cancer incidence and cancer mortality through a variety of preventive measures. With such a national cancer (prevention) plan, the profit expectations of the oncological pharmaceutical market would not be fulfilled in the next 5 to 10 years. In return, the quality of life and life expectancy of the population in Germany would increase significantly. On such a central question of democracy, citizens in Germany must be asked which national cancer plan they want.
01.08.2009
Every year more than 1.2 million people die of cancer in Europe. This means that a city the size of Munich, Prague or Brussels will succumb to cancer this year too. Due to the geriatricization of our population, we will double the number of cancer patients within the next 20 years. We can therefore assume that 30% of people in Europe will develop cancer during their lifetime. Although oncologists have been administering chemotherapy for over 50 years, the question of what the indication cancer means for patients has so far only been rudimentarily asked, even though around half of all patients will succumb to their suffering in 2009. For this reason, the Health Care Competence Center (HC3) in Zurich, in cooperation with the European Health Care Foundation Zurich (EUHCF), has addressed the issue of “information behavior of cancer patients”.
01.08.2009
Patient coaching as an innovative service in the healthcare system serves the purpose of promoting compliance, adherence, active participation and self-management of patients in coping with their illness, taking individual preferences into account. In this article, based on a definition of patient coaching, its necessity is derived from the high non-compliance or non-adherence rate, particularly among chronically ill and multimorbid patients. These are patients who require approximately 4/5 of all services provided by the health system. Compliance and adherence are described in terms of their importance as descriptive markers for the quality of patient cooperation in the treatment process. It should be noted that they should also be questioned with regard to their different causes (e.g. system-related, communication-related, individual/preference-related) so that a targeted and promising intervention can result in individual cases.
01.08.2009
The high treatment costs of tobacco-related diseases and the immense economic damage caused by smoking will exacerbate the financing problems of social systems in the future. One approach to addressing this problem is to reduce the prevalence of smoking through evidence-based tobacco cessation measures such as nicotine replacement therapy (NET). In some European countries, particularly Great Britain, these findings have given nicotine replacement therapy an important role in public health programs. The therapeutic effectiveness and the achievable health economic effects make NET a dominant strategy for smoking cessation in this country too. The latest study results based on data from the German health system show that, particularly for smokers with previous illnesses, the financial resources for NET are not only used cost-effectively, but are even overcompensated by avoided health care costs. For Germany, the study results presented and the international experience provide reason to reposition nicotine replacement therapy with regard to the degree of use and integration into the healthcare system.