[Criteria for prioritisation from a societal perspective].
The precarious financial situation of the German public health care system requires the limitation of health care benefits. Determining priorities between groups of patients, indications, or procedures and implementing preferential treatments is one of the pressing issues in health ethics, health law, social medicine and health politics. Although a public debate on priority setting, or prioritisation, has repeatedly been called for, it was mainly the physicians' views and values as well as the interests of their sponsors that have been voiced; the perspectives of patients and the public has been deemed irrelevant. In the following, we summarise the prioritisation experiences from some foreign countries and report on preliminary results obtained from qualitative interviews with healthy German citizens concerning their views on setting priorities with respect to diseases, therapies, people's lifestyle, demographic factors, and economic and ethical aspects.
Diederich
Adele
A
Jacobs University Bremen, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany. a.diederich@jacobs-university.de
Schreier
Margrit
M
D003710:Demography; D005858:Germany; D006291:Health Policy / Q000191:economics; D006292:Health Priorities / Q000191:economics* / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007883:Legislation, Medical; D008019:Life Style; D011057:Politics; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors