Doctors are calling for a total overhaul of the healthcare system
01.02.2011 10:50
“Our German healthcare system has been reformed so badly by politics that meaningful reforms have become impossible,” said the Baden-Württemberg regional group leader of the NAV-Virchow-Bund, Dr. Olaf Boettcher. In his opinion, statutory health insurance (GKV) has developed into a juggernaut. It is a scandal, said Dr. Boettcher says that the insured and their employers are now having to pay the highest compulsory contributions of all time, which are counteracted by increasingly poorer services for the sick.
“The GKV is a non-transparent black box where no one knows where the tens of billions go. It is irresponsible that our politicians sit idly by and watch as 50 percent of doctors' workforce is destroyed by bureaucracy instead of using it to work on patients. In the area of medical practices, an opaque, flat-rate remuneration system means that services such as the indispensable doctor-patient consultation become a loss-making business or that important examinations have to be postponed until the next quarter for financial reasons," criticizes the state chairman. The health insurance companies would have done so more power than ever before and used it. The sufferer in this system, according to Dr. Boettcher, be the patient. “The doctor is increasingly being demoted from the patient's partner to a vicarious agent of the health insurance companies.” That's why he calls for a system in which the patient is the focus and determines the service itself.
“A new health system inevitably includes transparency for everyone involved, cost reimbursement with a socially acceptable deductible as a motivation for cost-conscious behavior, the taxpayer taking over the health insurance for the children while at the same time eliminating the free co-insurance for the non-working wife.” Dr. Boettcher further suggests: “The state only sets the framework conditions, such as a legally defined basic service that could correspond to the range of services provided by the current statutory health insurance. It also ensures a uniform fee schedule for all health insurance companies and thus eliminates the gap between those with private and statutory health insurance. The statutory health insurance companies will be privatized, as the Techniker Krankenkasse has already demanded. Everyone living in Germany is required by law to have insurance - with all health insurance companies obliged to take out insurance. This prevents patients with 'bad risks' from being excluded by the insurer.”
“Our demands can be implemented,” emphasizes Dr. Boettcher. “Switzerland has been practicing a similar healthcare system since 1995, providing Swiss citizens with healthcare that is 50 percent higher than ours in terms of service and quality. Although the doctors receive twice as much as the Association of Resident Doctors in Germany and the hospitals even receive many times as much, the costs of the Swiss system - measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) - are only slightly higher than in Germany." Conclusion for Dr. Boettcher: “An improved Swiss system with German prices would be significantly less bureaucratic, more transparent and better in terms of service and quality. Then the patient would be king for us too.”