Health is precious: A look inside an emergency room
Image: obs
The hospitals in Germany are far too expensive for what they do. The hospital reform could have changed that. But the health minister missed the opportunity.
GHealth Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has described the hospital reform he is pushing for as a “revolution”, and the proposed changes actually go very far. But the minister has to be careful that his well-intentioned plans don’t fall apart, to the detriment of the patients in particular. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it looks like: The federal states are shooting up the reform, so that only a mild breeze could remain of the supposed revolution. This would mean wasting a great opportunity: In the worst case, the supply will not be better, only more expensive.
The inventory is sobering. The clinics devour a third of the expenses of statutory health insurance, twice as much as outpatient care. Measured against the population, the number of beds, doctors and nursing staff is high, and this also applies to inpatient expenditure per capita. Lauterbach recently pointed out that only Switzerland ranks similarly high. But in contrast to Germany, she achieves a particularly good supply with all the money.
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