Crocodile Tears
„Mehr als 10 Mal im Jahr beim Arzt“ seien Deutsche im Schnitt, so beklagt der Chef
der Techniker Krankenkasse, Jens Baas. Das sei “ziemlich viel im internationalen
Vergleich”.
There is considerably less regret about this among those who profit from our ailing health care system: Doesn’t it teach people with health insurance to run straight to the doctor at the first sign of any ailment, instead of first relying on tried-and-true home remedies and the body’s natural healing powers?
Going to the doctor ten times a year—that sounds like a nation of hypochondriacs. But above all, it’s one thing: a business result. Because who actually taught Germans that health begins in the waiting room? A system in which care only pays off if it comes with a billing code. There’s none for chamomile tea, calf compresses, and three days of patience. But for the twelfth check of a lab value that was already normal the first time—absolutely, certainly.
The complaint becomes particularly telling when one considers who is making it. That same Jens Baas had candidly admitted in 2016 in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags- Zeitung” that the insurance companies are competing with one another to persuade doctors to issue as many and as severe diagnoses as possible—with a bonus of ten euros per case if the patient becomes “on paper sicker,” because the risk structure adjustment system pays better or more severe cases. (1) So the patient is supposed to come in less often— but when they do come in, they’d better be sicker.
The real scandal isn’t the number of doctor visits. It’s that in this system, there’s no money to be made if you recover on your own. Because the body’s self-healing powers have an unforgivable law for this profit machine: Without an ICD code,
Note
(1) The original interview appeared on October 9, 2016, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (print) and on FAZ.net. It is behind a paywall there and cannot be found via search with a stable URL . Among others, the Deutsches Ärzteblatt reported on the interview on October 11, 2016.
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