A question for. . . Dr. med. Andras Gassen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians: Will there still be a family doctor in every village in the future?

Photo: Georg J. Lopata

Gassen: No. And I say quite provocatively: Why should it! In many villages there are no more post offices, there is no bakery, no gas station, the police haven't been around for long time anyway and the fire brigade comes from further away in the event of fire. I can't seriously expect young colleague to settle where there is otherwise no infrastructure and hardly anyone else is.

It can't be that people move away from the areas because of failed structural policy of the federal and state governments, but medical services of general interest should be guaranteed unchanged. I think bit of realism is indicated here. We should all think about how medical care can be organized there - be it through cooperation between inpatient units that are no longer needed, or by bringing together the remaining resident colleagues in new structures.

You won't get very far with just new remuneration concepts. Because, as is well known, money is not everything. The colleagues who are moving up are also concerned with the work-life balance. If the next generation of doctors were as greedy for money, as we doctors would like to assume, all would become country doctors today. Country doctors now earn very good money - and rightly so: After all, they work lot for it.

One more word about the current plans of the federal government: From my point of view, it is touchingly naive to think that I should be one Deny young colleague, young colleague from the big city, to settle down as doctor in the big city, so that this one then goes to the Uckermark as consequence. The colleague may be married, or there may be children who have to go to school. In some villages they no longer exist. And how do the doctors concerned react in this situation? They all stay in the hospital.

That is why we have to go other ways and not just rely on the coercion method. Coercion doesn't work - least of all in united Europe where freedom of establishment prevails. Our highly trained top medical professionals can choose their jobs. Before you go somewhere you don't want to go, stay in hospital, go abroad or, worst of all, turn your back on curative medicine. JF