Experts shocked – danger to life! Savings alert for cancer patients

Imagine that your child or your brother, your mother or your grandfather gets cancer, but the essential treatment with a drug approved by the European Health Authority is simply rejected by a so-called evaluation board of officials from the Ministry of Health.

A human life is “saved” as a cold expense for the civil service, there is no “choice” as with the infamous triage, you say? According to a draft of the accompanying budget law of the Ministry of Health leaked to the “Krone”, this could be exactly what health experts are threatening under the motto of quality assurance!

Until now, the trusted doctor – after consultation with the patient – carried out the optimal therapy with final responsibility in accordance with the national and international level of knowledge and experience, but now it is planned through the back door that a control committee of up to 30 people will intervene as a kind of price researcher who decides for selected medical specialties in the inpatient field (see also extract above).

“Patient lifespan converted into monetary value”
In the “Krone” interview, the internationally renowned cancer luminary criticized university prof. Salzburg sharply criticized this secret plan. Dr. Richard Greil: “This is a hugely undesirable development and hostility to innovation.

If the legal principle that human life cannot be valued for money has been in force since 1957, this would be a fundamental change. In effect, patients’ lives would be converted into monetary value. And people, some of whom have never seen or treated a patient, determined whether a life extension is worth the dollar amount in costs.

The board of the University Clinic for Internal Medicine warns of “enormous delays in medication”.

His fear: the decision-making process of the committee, which largely consists of representatives of health insurers and states, where three doctors should only have an advisory role and no voting rights, also takes time. Time that patients do not have for certain treatments in the fight against cancer or rare diseases, where every day counts.

“New medicines can reduce mortality (editor’s note: mortality rate) in individual cases by 1.8 to four percent,” warns the certified internist.

Elisabeth Weigand, Managing Director of Pro Rare Austria (www.prorare-austria.org), the voice for around 450,000 people in the country affected by a rare disease, welcomed the goal of a uniform solution for all of Austria when asked through ‘Krone’ financing from one source – but: ‘Our great concern is that the best possible care is not guaranteed or is guaranteed too late.’