Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-100"
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"en.20050427.10.3-100"2
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"Mr President, the right to health is a fundamental one, and it is the Member States’ responsibility to make it real for their citizens, who are absolutely entitled to choose their own healthcare provision and long-term care – anywhere in the EU, and irrespective of their own income.
It has to be said, though, that the accessibility and quality of health provision and care diverge to a considerable degree. An EU action programme to help promote public health has been in place since 2003, and it provides a sound basis on which our Member States can step up their cooperation. We need to arrive at common objectives, and specifically national strategies can then be devised to deal with the challenges of more mobile patients, rising costs for new treatments and – thank heaven – increased life expectancy.
Far too little, though – as the rapporteur has pointed out – is being invested in the preventive care that stops people becoming ill in the first place. The healthcare sector has considerable potential for employment. It is rightly seen as being likely to become more important in the future, not only in terms of the money that will be spent on it, but also of its potential for innovation. I am thinking of such things as home care services, for which there is an ever-increasing demand, and which make it possible for old people and the sick to be cared for in familiar domestic surroundings, something that is psychologically important and plays an important part in helping people to live longer and more healthily.
Rising life expectancy gives people a chance to make a personal contribution to society, in the shape of their own experience, which is so vital to it. There are many obstacles standing in the way of job creation in the health sector, and they will be difficult to overcome – one thinks, for example, of the high cost of social insurance in Germany, my home country. The European Union’s healthcare systems must be organised in such a way that the public can afford them and businesses can be freed from excessive costs and thereby encouraged to create jobs.
The rapporteur emphasises the need for preventive care, improved long-term treatment, and on the need to help patients by improving the much-needed exchange of information between Member States, and I agree with him in this."@en1
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