LAUSR

In every country in Europe, the costs of health care are increasing, the public complains over high insurance costs, the politicians likewise, and the subject is a hot topic in many countries. Increasingly the question arises, can we afford it, and politicians and health administrators are introducing new rules and regulations to reduce the increase of the total costs of the health system. While media, from newspapers to television, almost daily publish on various aspects of the problem, and physicians and other health care workers are confronted with the problem every day, the subject is strikingly absent at medical congresses. Take a look at the programmes of the last EADV congresses and you do not find anything of significance about health economics. Why is that so? We present and discuss on the effect and side effects of every treatment for every disease, but we never mention anything about the costs. We prescribe drugs for tens of thousands for a patient, most of us without having exact knowledge of the total costs of it, other than that we know that they are sometimes exorbitantly expensive. But since it does not affect ourselves or our patients economically, we are not worried. As physicians, we are ethically also obliged to take responsibility for the costs of our actions. It is necessary to have a minimum of knowledge in health economics to be able to do so, but neither in medical school nor in the postgraduate education that seems to be a subject. So others take over the field, politicians, economists and health care administrators, without any or much medical knowledge, and they do it over our heads. We need as physicians to be more active in the field of health economy, and we need to show this activity at a high level of health economic knowledge. To do this, we need to develop a strategy which includes basic education at medical school and later additional educational events/programmes to educate ourselves in the field. Only by understanding health economics are we able to act responsibly, and we need to demonstrate for politicians and health administrators that we take the challenge of increasing health costs seriously. May I propose that leaders start to include health economics in their educational programmes, and that EADV includes sessions on health economics in their congress programmes.