[How much quality loss can and will society afford?].

In Germany, there is an ever increasing gap between the legitimate claim to quality treatment and current health care reality. While the Republic of Germany still is among the world's best as regards the number of insured persons, health care expenditure and its share in gross national product, medical care has declined from top to medium quality. Underuse, overuse and misuse of health care resources have become noticeable, and patients are beginning to lose confidence in our healthcare system. Examples of deficit areas include the undersupply of care for many patients in the nursing sector, the life-threatening implications of trivialising diseases like sleep apnoea and the care of schizophrenic patients that is still lagging behind international standard. For many years German healthcare policy has only aimed at achieving cost containment, without simultaneously introducing drastic reforms to put an end to mismanagement. So far all attempts at reforming our healthcare system have only led to increased costs for the paying patients. In the face of this development the patients' demand for more information on healthcare system issues is rising and--due to better access to various novel information sources on the broad range of healthcare possibilities also--they are calling for improved medical care. The special focus is that modern, quality-oriented medicine will ultimately turn out to be the more efficient and cost-effective medicine.