The national health care system in the welfare state

Hubert Oppl and Ernst von Kardorff

Social Science & Medicine, 1990, vol. 31, issue 1, 43-50

Abstract: The German national health care system has for some time shown signs of being in difficulty. Their manifestations are the overloading of the system in terms of consumer demand, the monopoly of functions, ascribed and acquired, by various groups of services providers, and the divided authority and obligations regarding health care and financing, between the federal government and the semi-autonomous German states and localities. At a deeper level of analysis it would appear that the underlying ideological themes that have guided the development of the national health care system need to be questioned. Alternative models of health care can rest on medical sickness models, as is currently the case, or on community centered health care, including primary prevention. The latter is based on the conviction and the insight that health and sickness is not an individualistic, autonomous, and independent set of phenomena but instead is a communal condition that needs to be addressed as such. The expected result is that health and sickness would be re-defined, along with professional intervention.

Keywords: West; German; health; system; public; social; services; alternative; health; systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1990
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