2023-11-10 21:01:07
Innsbruck (OTS) – The power struggle has broken out between Health Minister Johannes Rauch and the Medical Association. The chamber has recently attracted attention due to internal quarrels and less focus on patient well-being.
Health Minister Johannes Rauch from the Greens and the representatives of the Medical Association will no longer be friends. The rifts are deep and the power struggle between Rauch and the medical association has fully flared up. Hardly any other health minister has ever taken on the medical association so vehemently.
This is not the first time that Rauch has been the blocker in the professional representation. When it came to installing primary care centers in Austria, Rauch blamed the slow pace of implementation on the part of the actors in the chamber. The medical centers should offer patients the advantage of paying for services with an e-card and not with a debit card. For the medical profession, primary care units bring new employment models, but also competition.
So now Rauch has presented, in his words, “the biggest structural reform of the past few decades”. The mammoth project should be finalized within two weeks. This should bring hundreds of new health insurance offices, more primary care facilities and health insurance outpatient clinics for the badly hit patient population. Rauch’s list is long and should be implemented primarily without the medical association. Unsurprisingly, the minister is receiving support from social security representatives. The health insurance companies would then set the fees for the doctors in a uniform contract across Austria. Sounds tempting from the health insurance fund’s perspective, but it would be as if wage negotiations were taking place without employee representation. The end of social partnership.
The Medical Association was a very strong professional representation for a very long time. Recently, however, she had made a name for herself through internal quarrels that spilled out with embarrassing and dirty details. Politicians rarely took issue with the chamber, because when things got tough, the doctors waved the proverbial shroud. Public pressure grew and politicians had to back down. However, the solidarity of the population with doctors has suffered in recent years. More elective doctors than statutory health insurance physicians, billing billions for corona tests and fending off competition to the detriment of patients have damaged the image of the medical profession.
It will be exciting to see how the ÖVP side in the government behaves and whether the medical association implements its threats. Minister Rauch will not give in, he does not want to be reappointed.
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