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Health Care in German Society
Germany's health care system provides its residents with nearly universal
access to comprehensive high-quality medical care and a choice of physicians.
Over 90 percent of the population receives health care through the country's
statutory health care insurance program. Membership in this program is
compulsory for all those earning less than a periodically revised income
ceiling. Nearly all of the remainder of the population receives health
care via private for-profit insurance companies. Everyone uses the same
health care facilities.
Although the federal government has an important role in specifying national
health care policies and although the Länder control the hospital
sector, the country's health care system is not government run. Instead,
it is administered by national and regional self-governing associations
of payers and providers. These associations play key roles in specifying
the details of national health policy and negotiate with one another about
financing and providing health care. In addition, instead of being paid
for by taxes, the system is financed mostly by health care insurance premiums,
both compulsory and voluntary.
In early 1993, the Health Care Structural Reform Act (Gesundheitsstrukturgesetz--GSG)
came into effect, marking the end of a more than a century-long period
in which benefits and services under statutory public health insurance
had been extended to ever larger segments of the population. Rising health
expenditures may prompt policy makers to impose further restrictions on
providers and consumers of health care. These high expenditures have been
caused by a rapidly aging population (retirees' costs rose by 962 percent
between 1972 and 1992), the intensive and costly use of advanced-technology
medical procedures, and other economic and budgetary pressures. As of
mid-1995, the drafting of new reform proposals was under way.
For residents of the former GDR, the era of free care ended in 1991.
The political decision to adopt the FRG's health care system required
the reorganization of nearly all components of health care in the new
Länder. As of mid-1995, the reorganization of the health care system
in the former GDR still was far from completion.
* Development of
the Health Care System
* Health Insurance
* Health Care Providers
* Remuneration
of Health Care Providers
* Current Health Care
Issues
- Population
- Immigration
- Women In Society
- Marriage
- Fertility
- Mortality
- Age-Gender Distribution
- Social Structure
- Health Care
- Religion
- Urbanization
- Geography (lands,
topography and climate)
- Society (population,
religion, marriage, urbanization, social structure, immigration)
- Education (elementary,
junior, senior, vocational, higher)
- Economy (the Economic
Miracle, financial system, Bundesbank, business culture)
- Politics (government,
the Chancellor, the President, parties, Bundestag)
- Mass Media (newspapers,
radio and TV)
- Armed Forces (army,
navy, air forces, police)
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