[Solidarity and financing in the statutory health insurance system sin West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s].
Until the early seventies escalating costs in the health care sector were accepted as being a necessary consequence of social progress. However, this view has since begun to shift. Due to the recession in the mid-seventies, mounting health expenditures now loomed as a threat to the economy. Rather than social progress, the issue now was measures to curb the rising costs and increase-insurance revenues. Rising health care contributions initiated by the government coalition of Social Democrats and the Liberal Party marked this change of perspective in health policy that led to restraints in the principle of solidarity within the statutory health insurance system and, as a result, to a renewed privatisation of health expenditures. Since then patients who had health insurance were obliged to pay a larger share of their health expenses.
Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease, University of Durham, Queen's Campus, Wolfson Research Institute, University Boulevard, Stockton-on-Tees TS17 6BH, United Kingdom. l.d.sauerteig@durham.ac.uk
Lutz
L
Sauerteig
D005860:Germany, West; D049673:History, 20th Century; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000191:economics* / Q000266:history / Q000458:organization & administration*