To ensure that distribution conflicts in the healthcare system do not fall on the shoulders of doctors and nursing staff, the outgoing chairwoman of the German Ethics Council, Alena Buyx, is calling for a fundamental further development of the solidarity system. Image: Steffen Roth
The health system is under pressure. We will soon no longer be able to afford the kind of care we currently have. But the idea of solidarity should not be shaken, says Ethics Council Chairwoman Alena Buyx.
Prof. Buyx, we have an almost unique solidarity health system in Germany, which we are rightly quite proud of. At the same time, pressure is increasing due to a shortage of skilled workers, expensive high-tech medicine and increasingly old patients in need of care. Can we hold on to solidarity under these conditions?
Eva Schlafer
Editor in the “Life” department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Lucia Schmidt
Editor in the “Life” department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Our healthcare system is one of the world‘s best and is actually one in which every patient still receives the gold standard in treatment, including the latest and best developments in the field of medicine, without having to pay for it privately and directly. These services are financed in solidarity from statutory health insurance. Of course, there are also increasing dysfunctions in this system. But the bottom line is that this is something deeply worth preserving.