Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-098"
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"en.20050427.10.3-098"2
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".
Mr President, the provision of guaranteed health care is one of the state’s most important duties, and it derives from the basic rights of individuals. Every country should be required to maintain and fund essential health care services. The liberal approach, which consists of privatising services and imposing market conditions upon them by means of various pieces of legislation will not safeguard the provision of care in areas such as preventive medicine, mother and baby care, diseases of civilisation and geriatric and palliative care. Even though these areas are all loss-making, they are essential and crucial for public health. It is a well-known fact that investing in health means investing in people, as is the case with education. As I only have a few minutes’ speaking time, I should like to focus on what we see as the most important points. There needs to be a public health service, and this health service must continue to develop and remain accessible to all, both to those who can afford treatment and to those who cannot. No ideal system has yet been found for either organising or funding health care services. There are advantages and disadvantages inherent in every system, including both systems based on insurance contributions and what could be termed state-funded systems. The best solution is therefore probably a mixed system. At the same time, however, the social rights of health care workers and patients must be properly safeguarded. State funding must be available for public hospitals, preventive medicine and all other loss-making areas. A great many lofty sentiments have been expressed, particularly in EU legislation, on the subject of modernising social protection in order to develop and improve health care, yet they are often contradictory. The sole result of this is to aggravate the situation with regard to social and health care, even though it is already difficult enough in many countries as a result of increasing costs, bloodthirsty capitalism and a failure to observe moral principles. A good example of this is the contradictions that arise from the fact that the Member States have seemingly been placed in charge of organisation and funding, yet medical services have been included in the services directive. If we wish to guarantee the provision of high-quality care, we cannot regard health as a productive sector of the economy, or health services as normal commercial services. By way of example, one company expects to make as much as CHF 13 billion from sales of an anti-cancer drug after gaining permission to sell the drug in Europe.
I have sometimes heard it said in this House that a poor Europe cannot afford to provide long-term care, and that instead we should practice euthanasia, or in other words get rid of the problem by putting people to death. This should not be what is meant by modernising social protection in order to develop and improve health care. The only answer to an ageing population is to change our attitude to conceived life. We should protect this life and do all we can, by which I also mean observing moral principles, in order to improve not only the quality, but also the functioning of health care services. Furthermore, we will not improve health care services in any way whatsoever through extensive administrative machinery, corruption, bureaucracy and by publishing ever more regulations, reports, opinions, declarations and identical or similar lists. This merely increases costs and wastes the time of both the authorities and the doctors and nurses, whose job is to help the sick."@en1
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