„Welcher Patient geht leer aus?“
(
Which patient is going to go empty handed?)
Eckhard Nagel transplant surgeon from the National Ethics Council explains the need to ration medical care
FOCUS: German health politicians will assert that full coverage of the population would remain with the forefront of medicine. In contrast, the National Ethics Council now proposes a new public debate about rationing. Is this really necessary?
Nagel: Announcements, for each treatment was at all times hochleistungsmedizinische feasible, I think is a dangerous suppression of reality.
Rationing is part of everyday life in medicine and will increase in future (ZIMMER PERSONAL NOTE: in socialist systems).
Even today, patients have to wait for important operations, because such are not enough seats for its intensive care are available. Also needs to be decided in transplantation medicine, which patient receives a saving institution and which no seats, and possibly died on the waiting list. This dilemma is considered too little.
FOCUS: Why has not held a public discussion about rationing?
Nagel:
The allocation of limited health goods from cost factors is an extremely sensitive issue on which our society is ill prepared.
Politicians have made the experience that she had rather inconvenient truth. Otherwise they run the risk of being punished as a bearer of bad news - for example at the ballot box. Despite everything, I believe it is their duty to clearly identify the problem situation, even if there is no easy way out of it visible.
FOCUS: Can we avoid the limited allocation, as we raise more money for the health system?
Nails: At the moment already. However, medical progress has no foreseeable limits. We are made in each case to the question of what we can afford. Is it even possible to provide all health goods as before to after the of equality? Or should the treatment after the budget of the patient, his age or his social embeddedness judge? Must pay an injured his therapy out of pocket if he caused the accident itself? Such scenarios have to respond, and that takes is an ethical debate.
FOCUS: Should 85-year-old fear that they will receive an artificial hip or heart valve?
Nagel: I think so. But of course, decisions on ethical dilemmas remain conflict is not enough. We must strive just to the best of all strategies. This decision process needs to be maximized transparent (ZIMMER PERSONAL NOTE: ROTFLMFAO). Only then will the people get the feeling that they are involved in the deliberations, even if they do not approve of (ZIMMER PERSONAL NOTE: ROTFLMFAO... THEY CANNOT COMPLAIN WHEN THEY ARE DEAD).
FOCUS:
What do you fear, when politicians and citizens continue to ignore that rationing has to be?
Nagel:
This can have fatal consequences, in which the patient - and we all suffer - unnecessarily sometime. As will be discussed today about the cost of health only in the short term and with slogans, emotional statement to the situation. This is an unfortunate way to kick start the discussion, because it causes anxiety. Citizens feel existentially delivered.
Eckhard Nagel, 46, a health scientist of the University of Bayreuth.
The Augsburg surgeon was appointed in 2001 in the National Ethics Council.
Medizin: „Welcher Patient geht leer aus?“ - News - FOCUS Online