healthcare

• healthcare based on two principles:

  • Communities tended to be healthy for the strength of the nation.
  • Individuals needed to be healthy so they could produce more.
  • Largely funded through a system of National Insurance.
  • Employees contributed 10% of gross income and employers and equivalent amount.
  • 1970s and 1980s - healthcare provision improved in terms of numbers.
  • infant mortality rate fell as a result of better ante- and postnatal care.
  • 1959- the GDR overtook the FRG where 10.83 babies per thousand died, rose slightly over the subsequent decades.
• problems with health care

  • increased costs, an ageing population and greater expectations
  • With most European countries in the 1970s and 1980s, care for those with mental illness was less robust than in other areas.
  • The economy could not afford the quality of care it sought.
  • The provision was not equal, the political elite and those felt to be more valuable to the state, for example, scientists, received better treatment than the rest of the population.
• A number of hospital beds was cut from 190,000 to 160,000 from 1970 to 1989
• GDR had some grim care homes and mental institutions, many of which predated the Nazi period
• In 1988, it was estimated that only 30% of the equipment needed for successful heart surgery and transplants was available in the GDR
• Scientists in the GDR were expected to pay 10% more from their salaries
• Much specialist equipment had to be imported as the state lacked the resources to pay for it
• Even the largest hospital in the GDR, Berlin-Buch, faced shortages of equipment and medicines
• Shortfalls of different drugs and medicines were common throughout the GDR
• Basic items like rubber gloves and sterile syringes could be in short supply in the GDR
• General Practitioners often complained of shortages of equipment and medicines
• There was a reluctance in the GDR healthcare system to address issues such as mental illness, alcoholism, suicide, and domestic violence