Congress report - European Health Forum Gastein

Plenary Session III
Plenary Session III
Marc Danzon
Abstract and speech not available.
Integrating Health across Policies
Reinhart Waneck
As it concerns a very complex matter, this question can be answered either very briefly and
quite simply, or in a rather convoluted way. In my following comment I am attempting to find
a compromise between the two aforementioned possibilities.
First a brief answer:
Europe needs a lot of health! So far it has done very little and is, most of all, rather
unprepared for future challenges.
Now let me enter into the more complex part:
What is health? The WHO defines health as a condition of physical, psychological and
sociological well being. At the same time we say “Life’s most precious gift is good health!”
Therefore our first goal is to preserve health, and the second to restore it. All serious
opinion- polls conducted within the EU suggest that its citizens see health, internal safety
and education by far as the most important precondition for a safeguarded life and hence
range top of the list.
In the health-sector, Austria has in the last years, well, in the past decades really, moved far
too much, meaning that all of us involved in the health-sector have been unable to really
align- within existing performance structures- the medical progress which has been achieved
in the meantime to the greater good of man.
It is therefore our main task to restore the balance between financial backing and the
required medical performance. Besides, there is the other fact that we cannot really predict,
where medical progress is going to lead us.
It is an unwritten law that a society with a high degree of performance and development, as
is the case in Austria, cannot only be asking for access-guarantees to further medical
progress, but also has to be prepared to invest into it. This could be achieved either through
joint contributions, or cost – sharing.
For we all have to be fully aware that the practiced smoke-screen strategy which conveyed
the impression that medical care can be available for nothing, is no longer viable
economically.
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These rather broadly spoken words are, with a few alterations and considerations applicable
to most countries, as well as to EU-countries.