Redefining German Health Care

The German health care system is on a collision course with budget realities. Costs are high and rising, and quality problems are becoming ever more apparent. Decades of reforms have produced little change to these troubling trends. §Why has Germany failed to solve these cost and quality problems? The reason is that Germany has not set value for patients as the overarching goal, defined as the patient health outcomes achieved per euro expended.§This book lays out an action agenda to move Germany to a high value system: care must be reorganized around patients and their medical conditions, providers must compete around the outcomes they achieve, health plans must take an active role in improving subscriber health, and payment must shift to models that reward excellent providers. Also, private insurance must be integrated in the risk-pooling system. §These steps are practical and achievable, as numerous examples in the book demonstrate. Moving to a value-based health care system is the only way for Germany to continue to ensure access to excellent health care for everyone. §§We must thank the authors of Redefining German Health Care for changing the language of the current health care debate. Their book makes a passionate argument for moving the health care discussion beyond cost control, health insurance premiums and risk pooling. It is health outcomes that matter to patients, not insurance premiums per se.