BMJ 2008;336:796 (12 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39545.400451.DB
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Germany has two tier health service, study shows
Annette Tuffs
1 Heidelberg
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A study has provoked controversy in Germany because it shows that the country’s healthcare system has two tiers (International Journal of Equity in Health 2008;7:1; doi: 10.1186/1475-9276-7-1).
The study, by the Institute of Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology of Cologne University, has shown that patients who have statutory health insurance have to wait about three times longer for an appointment with a specialist than members of private health insurance schemes.
The German health minister Ulla Schmidt said that this is illegal, but the president of the German Medical Association, Jörg Hoppe, admitted that there are differences in the service provided to the two groups. He pointed out that with fixed healthcare budgets per quarter provided to doctors by the state health insurance organisations appointments for patients with statutory health insurance had to be delayed for financial reasons; otherwise doctors would have to work unpaid.
About 90% of the
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