2024-02-16 20:45:42
At “Maischberger”, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach defended the hospital reform. A guest dared to make a drastic prediction about the US election.
Karl Lauterbach’s planned hospital reform has met with vehement criticism from his opponents: CSU boss Söder accuses him of a “planned clear-cutting”. However, Lauterbach himself explained: If the reform is not passed soon, there will be hospital deaths.
The guests
- Karl Lauterbach, SPD – Federal Minister of Health
- Uwe Janssens – intensive care physician and chief physician
- Frederik Pleitgen – CNN war reporter
- Boris Bondarev – former Russian UN diplomat
- Urban Priol – cabaret artist
- Helene Bubrowski – deputy editor-in-chief of Table.Media
- Nikolaus Blome – Head of Politics RTL/n-tv
What is hospital reform actually about? Lauterbach explained the three most important goals to the audience. Firstly, patients should be able to get to the hospital that is suitable for their treatment purposes more easily. Secondly, you have to protect those hospitals that you really need from bankruptcy. Thirdly, it is important to reduce the excess number of hospitals. “We have too many hospitals. We have neither the medical needs nor the staff nor the money to maintain the highest hospital density in Europe,” said Lauterbach. If the reform doesn’t come, then there would be “large, disorderly, spectacular hospital deaths.”
Janssens: Enormous concern among nursing staff
Intensive care physician and chief physician Uwe Janssens does not believe that Lauterbach’s plans would make the hospitals’ financial situation even more difficult, as critics accuse the minister of doing. But he doubted whether it would be implemented in a timely manner. Negative developments can no longer be stopped, he said: “Many hospitals are massively in the red and that will not be stopped either.” There will be a lot of bankruptcies, and we can already see this happening.
The concern among nursing staff about closures is enormous, said the chief physician. He called on politicians to “give society more support” when it comes to these problems. You have to make it clear to the patient that “the services they previously received without money are no longer available. The money is no longer there.” Janssens predicted: “We will have to make huge cuts.”
Lauterbach: Germany has the most expensive healthcare system
According to Janssens, the fundamental question is what we can still afford in an increasingly aging society. Chemotherapy for nonagenarians may no longer necessarily make sense. There is a fundamental undersupply for children, an oversupply of old patients, and aging means that there will no longer be any nursing staff. You have to set limits.
Lauterbach did not agree here. He sees potential for savings in other areas. “Germany has the most expensive healthcare system. Other countries spend less but have better care. As long as we waste so much money that we could use much better, I am not prepared to talk about rationing among older people.”
Blome: Then compulsory military service will come back in Germany
The second block of topics on the program was the war in Ukraine and a new European security policy. A particular focus was on the question of what would happen if Donald Trump actually became US President again. Cabaret artist Urban Priol sees Trump’s threats about not wanting to protect non-paying NATO members from a Russian attack as a mafia-like protection racket.
RTL/n-tv’s political director, Nikolaus Blome, is not surprised by Trump’s threat and referred to interviews from the past in which Trump vehemently criticized NATO. Journalist Helene Bubrowski said the debate about European defense capability must be conducted independently of Trump. She thinks the proposal for a European atomic bomb is correct in principle, but it becomes dangerous the moment it takes on an anti-American overtone.
The fact that Olaf Scholz has so far rejected all of France’s proposals is scandalous. Blome dramatically summarized the consequences of a second Trump presidency for Europe: “If Donald Trump is elected, the next day the debt brake will be lifted in Germany and conscription will be introduced.”
Pleitgen: Russia gains and loses terrain
Afterwards, CNN war reporter Frederik Pleitgen gave his assessment of the situation in Ukraine. “Things are looking better for the Ukrainians than I thought,” said Pleitgen. Although Russia is gaining territories, these are rather small. “The Russian army already has the upper hand. But any gains in terrain they make are always associated with massive losses in terrain,” he explained. Russian production of tanks is of poor quality, the tanks are quickly shot down.