2023-11-13 10:37:40
VIENNA. Imagine your child, sibling, mother or grandfather has cancer – but vital treatment with a drug approved by the European Health Authority is recommended by officials at the Austrian Ministry of Health.a so-called evaluation board It is rejected by.
Human lives being “saved” as a cold official cost center, are you saying there is no “choice” as in the famous triage? However, according to the draft Budget Law of the Ministry of Health leaked to the newspaper „Krone“, this may be exactly what healthcare professionals are threatening under the slogan of quality assurance.
Whereas in the past it was the case that the trusted doctor was responsible for applying the most appropriate treatment – in consultation with the patient – according to national and international knowledge and experience, it is now planned that a control committee of up to 30 people will decide on the selected medical specialties in the “intramural sector” through the back door
“Patients’ life expectancy was converted into monetary value”
Internationally renowned cancer specialist from Salzburg, Prof. Dr. Richard Greil, harshly criticized this secret plan in an interview with Krone: “This is a great misdirection and hostility to innovation. “New drugs can reduce the death rate by 1.8 to four percent in individual cases,” he said.
Elisabeth Weigand, Managing Director of Pro Rare Austria (www.prorare-austria.org), which is the spokesperson for approximately 450,000 people affected by a rare disease in Austria, welcomed the goal of a standard Austria-wide solution for funding from a single source and noted the following: “Our biggest concern is that the best possible care is not guaranteed or is guaranteed too late.”
The Director of the University’s Department of Internal Medicine warned that “major delays in drug treatment” may occur and said: “Our fear is that the decision-making process of the commission, which consists largely of representatives of health insurance companies and federal states and is expected to have only an advisory role and no voting rights for three doctors, will It will also take time. In the fight against cancer or rare diseases, where every day counts is the time patients do not have for certain treatments. This would be a radical change if the legal principle that human life is not worth anything held true since 1957. In fact, the life expectancy of patients will be converted into monetary value. And people, some of whom have never seen or treated a patient, will decide whether extending life is worth the cost in euros.“
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