Non-smokers are at the expense of health insurance

Smoking cessation demanded at the expense of health insurance companies

09.03.2012

Smokers have a much higher risk of disease than non-smokers. Annually, the coffers spend hundreds of millions of euros on some serious complications. Pulmonary specialists and scientists therefore demand that smoking-stop therapies be included in the catalog of benefits by the statutory health insurance companies. In future, it will be possible to save costs despite overspending, because illnesses are avoided.

Equality of addiction patients required
A nicotine addiction causes abstinence sometimes severe withdrawal symptoms such as inner restlessness, irritability, headache, dizziness and excessive sweating. The symptoms occur mainly because the body's reward system stimulated by the neurotoxin nicotine fails in a withdrawal. Most sufferers therefore need active support to get away from the glowing stalks. Pulmonary and cancer experts demand from the health insurance companies to take on rising costs in a smoking cessation, so there will be more non-smokers in Germany in the future. Because the dependency potential is just as serious, „as with other addictions“. The addicted patients should be treated the same way, „like drug and alcohol addicts“, call the German Cancer Research Center, the German Society for Addiction Research and Addiction Therapy, German Heart Foundation, the Scientific Committee for Tobacco Cessation, the Federal Association of Pulmonologists (BdP) and the German Society of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Neurology in a joint statement. Other European countries such as Sweden, Finland or Great Britain are already a step further in this respect. There, the costs are taken over for some time by the coffers.

The health insurance companies argue that they are not obliged for so-called „Lifestyle treatments“ pay. The „Dependence on cigarettes is a serious and pathological addiction“ and not downplaying a lifestyle phenomenon, said the vice chairman of the Association of Pulmonary Specialists. med. Thomas Hering.

Risk factor of more than 40 chronic diseases
Smoking is an offside in addition to obesity „Risk factor of more than 40 chronic diseases“. Many cancers, cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure or heart attack and metabolic disorders such as Type II diabetes as well as lung diseases such as lung cancer or smoker's cough (COPD) could be avoided if smoking ceases immediately. In Germany, however, addicted smokers wait in vain for the health insurance companies to pay the costs for therapy, Henning warned.

According to the researchers and associations, the cost of reimbursing the therapies would cost "about one million euros a day" for medicines alone, but health insurance companies would save more money on the whole because a large proportion of the sequelae will be avoided in the near future could. According to some studies, about 7.5 billion euros per year for the treatment of serious illnesses. Including incapacity for work, early retirement and deaths, the national economy incurs an annual total damage of as much as 21 billion euros.

„Concerned people should get help to make the exit once and for all“. Cognitive-behavioral therapy in combination with drugs has proven to be effective, as the Federal Ministry of Health stated to Head of Department Daniel Bahr (FDP). Recent surveys have shown that about 20 million adults in Germany are dependent on tobacco consumption. According to the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), about 120,000 people die every year from the long-term effects of smoking. In addition to conventional smoking cessation programs, alternative concepts also exist. Helpful in recent years, the hypnosis has been found. (Sb)

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With hypnosis for the nonsmoker

Picture: Martin Büdenbender