Best 14 quotes of Karl Lauterbach on MyQuotes

In comparison to the U.S. health care system, the German system is clearly better, because the German health care system works for everyone who needs care, ... costs little money, and it's not a system about which you have to worry all the time. I think that for us the risk is that the private system undermines the solidarity principle. If that is fixed and we concentrate a little bit on better competition and more research, I think the German health care system is a nice third way between a for-profit system on the one hand and, let's say, a single-payer system on the other hand.

In Germany it's impossible to go bankrupt for medical bills, because even if you are bankrupt, ... the social solidarity system pays for your medical bills. The idea is, if you do have financial problems and a lot of worries for other reasons, you do not need to have another burden in not being able to pay medical bills.

In Germany there is ranking for contribution rate, so the cheaper sickness funds with good quality can both advertise their better quality plus their lower contribution rates and therefore be gaining members. We had about 240 sickness funds a couple of months ago; we are now down to 213, I think. In two or three years, only 50 or so will survive.

I think from an economics point of view, it is important that the money that is spent for health care is well spent - what is the cost-effectiveness of the money that is used? - because if the money is well spent, many people benefit from the system, and it is also a good market for finding employment. I do not see a reason why we should limit ourselves when it comes to very qualified and humane employment opportunities if there is no waste and if there is medical need.

I think the Scandinavian health systems are better when it comes to preventative care than the German system, because in the Scandinavian systems, the government is really more active in defining treatment, goals and defining health priorities. The German system is a competitive system with little government intervention. The price for this is that the government cannot set a health agenda. And the Scandinavian systems have little competition, so you often do have waiting lists. But on the other hand, you then have the government which can push for prevention.

I think, unfortunately, many opinion leaders in Germany - including government officials, politicians, social service bureaucrats and so forth - they are in the private system, and they get paid the private insurance by their employer. So for them this is the best of two worlds: They have some more expensive and privileged access, but they do not have to pay for it themselves. This is a system which is both inefficient and unfair at the same time, but it is defended by those who profit from this system, and this includes many opinion leaders and many politicians.

I think we have in Germany too many sickness funds. We started with more than 1,000 sickness funds. But the fewer sickness funds there are, the less bureaucracy and the easier the system is to operate. But it is important that the best sickness funds survive.

The German health care system is unique in its attempt to combine competition among sickness funds on the one hand and a universal coverage plan on the other hand. Most health care systems are either one or the other, so you either have private insurance and competition but not everyone is covered for everything, or you have a single-payer system. So the ideal types are like the American system on the one hand or the Scandinavian or U.K. systems on the other end. Germany tries to combine the advantages.

The quality of health care in Germany is not as good as people sometimes believe it to be. We have problems with chronic diseases. The German system allows too many hospitals and specialists to treat chronic diseases. We do not have enough volume in many institutions to deliver good quality, and we do have fairly strict separations ... between primary physicians, office specialists and hospital specialists. But I think the quality problems can be solved in the next couple of years, and we have made major progress in diabetes, coronary artery disease and pulmonary disease care.

The same drugs are way cheaper in Germany than in America because, obviously, if all sickness funds negotiate with the drug companies for a single price, then the market power of the sickness funds is fully used. So therefore you would expect the prices to be lower for the drugs in Germany, and this is exactly what you see, at least for non-generic drugs.

The U.S. has a system that does have a poor cost-benefit ratio. I mean, 40 million people lack insurance; another 30 million or so are underinsured. The people who are insured do have to worry whether they are able to pay the bills. People become bankrupt because they cannot pay the medical bills, and there are vast differences in the quality of care depending on how much you are prepared and able to pay. I think the system is not working well.

Bei fortgeschrittenem Krebs hat der Patient aus seiner subjektiven Sicht oft nichts mehr zu verlieren.

In den Vereinigten Staaten sind im letzten Jahrhundert schätzungsweise zwanzigmal mehr Menschen durch das Rauchen gestorben als durch alle Kriege zusammen. Im Vietnamkrieg starben langfristig viel mehr Soldaten durch die zur Verfügung gestellten Zigaretten als durch den Feind.

Stress ist zwar kein Risikofaktor, kann aber dann zu Krebs führen, wenn man raucht, um dem Stress zu begegnen.