Extremely interesting but not necessarily advantageous and useful discussions are currently breaking out in Germany. Professor Bernd Raffelhüschen, former advisor to the first red-green coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, suggested that those with health insurance should contribute up to 2,000 euros a year to their health costs themselves.
Other voices are demanding that those who have not been vaccinated should kindly bear the costs of their treatments themselves in the event that they contract corona. These suggestions quickly show the attentive contemporaries from which direction the wind is blowing and how our society is still doing.
The fact that the unvaccinated must continue to serve as an enemy speaks for itself, but basically only distracts from the topic, because it is a phenomenon that occurs again and again that the groups that are relatively small should be cashed in first.
Who is next?
One can now argue whether the more than 20 percent unvaccinated is a small group or not. But compared to other possible groups, such as smokers, the overweight, and people who regularly consume alcohol, their number is at least smaller.
So let’s not get confused by the smoke candle unvaccinated-vaccinated. At its core, it is about taking services out of the healthcare system and imposing them on the individual. Bernd Raffelhüschen’s suggestion goes in the same direction.
There is no question that savings have to be made. However, two things should not be lost sight of: First of all, it should be ensured that social cohesion does not fall by the wayside in the end. Then it should be ensured that low-income earners will not be the big losers from the austerity measures.
This will happen when sick people with lower incomes are supposed to contribute to certain health system benefits, but non-working Hartz IV recipients receive these benefits. Once word gets around, even more low-paying jobs will remain permanently vacant in the future.