SPÖ boss Andreas Babler wants to oblige elective doctors to treat patients according to the health insurance tariff if there is no specialist appointment for them in the public health system. This is intended to ensure the guarantee demanded by the SPÖ of an appointment with a specialist within two weeks, as Babler explained at a press conference in Vienna on Wednesday. There should be a legal claim for this through a “Treatment Guarantee Act”.
The SPÖ argues its proposal that elective doctors – i.e. doctors without a health insurance contract – should also make a fair contribution to public health care, comparable to lawyers who accept legal aid cases. Babler emphasized that the legal obligation for elective doctors should only be used in “emergencies” and as a “last resort”. Initially, patients who cannot find a specialist appointment themselves should be given an appointment via the health hotline 1450. If this does not succeed, hospitals or social security would have to step in. Only when these options have been exhausted should elective doctors be made responsible.
First of all, according to the SPÖ leader’s ideas, there should be the possibility of a contractual commitment for elective doctors. If this is not enough, elective doctors should be legally obliged to treat patients according to the health insurance tariff. Specifically, in its model, the SPÖ envisages a mandatory treatment quota of around ten percent of their patients for elective doctors. According to SPÖ calculations, this would correspond to around 200,000 consultations per year. If elective doctors refuse, they would be deprived of the opportunity to issue invoices for which social insurance would provide partial reimbursement. This would transform them from so-called elective doctors to purely private doctors.
NEOS see wrong approach
For NEOS, Babler’s approach is going in the wrong direction. “Babler wants to put the doctors under pressure, but it is the health insurance companies that are not fulfilling their care mandate,” explained health spokeswoman Fiona Fiedler. It is not the elective doctors who should pay for the “failure of the health insurance companies”. Rather, the “red and black managers in social security” are to blame for this.
