A health vision for the future
How to buck the trend.
Europe is confronting a huge and growing problem which will be hard to tackle. Europe is aging rapidly. This phenomenon has and will have a major impact on our society's employment infrastructures. More and more older people will remain on the employment market as the number of younger people gradually decreases. This will inevitably influence the pressure sustained by financial actors in our society. At this moment it’s still possible to keep our heads above the water, but in the near future this will become impossible if we stick to our traditional way of financing the different social security systems. Health care and insurance will be the first sectors to be influenced. As the number of elderly people grow, the cost of our health care will increase rapidly. The smaller group of our younger working population won’t be able to financially compensate or balance out these growing financial needs. Social security and health insurance will have to find a way to avoid serious financial trouble. Our near future vision is to be reactive and prepare society for the storm ahead. For the moment social health services play a predominantly curative role. You don’t go to see a physician unless you are ill. The doctor will help ill people to get better, prescribing medication, physiotherapy, etc…. In other words, the physician is a disease specialist, not a health specialist. Change is necessary, from the point of view of the medical specialists as well as the consumers (ill people). People don’t want to be confronted with the consequences of their lifestyle. Basically the responsibility for a person’s health should be where it belongs: in the human himself. This creates a problem. How? What? Where? When? etc. This problem has to be tackled. The solution might be painstaking and time-consuming, a slow but worthwhile process. We have been a welfare state, for decades. Are these changes necessary? YES, we have no choice. We have to switch to preventive health care because the curative approach has become too expensive. Our health budgets are reaching their limits: it’s bend or burst. Let’s devise a new and honest ˜’National Healthcare Plan’’ In our vision, self-responsibility will play a crucial role in the future social security system. Insurance is there to avoid unpleasant surprises when things go pear-shaped. Think about car insurance. Take out an ’all-risk’’ insurance and you don’t have to worry about your mistakes anymore! You have passed your financial responsibility on to the company. One scratch more or less won’t make a difference.  |