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Addiction medicine asks that cashes should pay for smoking cessation
Tobacco use is unhealthy, but many people still underestimate the many diseases caused by smoking. Although some people manage to keep their hands off cigarettes, if they deal with the dangers more, not all. An expert now demands that the health insurance companies pay for smoking cessation.
COPD and lung cancer are only a fraction of the diseases that can be caused by smoking. (Image: bilderzwerg / fotolia.com) Good reasons for smoking cessation
Smoking harms health: all experts agree on that. How dangerous tobacco use really is, researchers from the US have recently confirmed again in a study. Accordingly, smokers not only get sick and die of lung cancer, but also of many other diseases. These include twelve types of cancer, such as pancreatic cancer and colon cancer, cardiovascular diseases such as a heart attack, stroke, diabetes, arterial diseases such as atherosclerosis (arteriosclerosis) and the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD (smoker's cough). Although some smokers can stop well if they deal with the dangers of nicotine and CO, but by no means all this is easy.
Tobacco use is not considered a disease
The TV channel "RTF.1" now reports on its website, a recognized expert urge that health insurance companies pay for smoking cessation. The consumption of tobacco in this country is not considered a disease, but as self-injurious behavior. Affected, who want to stop, therefore have to pay the treatment itself. The head of the Section for Addiction Medicine and Addiction Research at the University Hospital Tübingen, Professor Anil Batra says that this is an intolerable condition. In the "Apotheken Umschau" he said: "Like alcoholics, dependent smokers have a right to financing their therapy." According to a study by the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), this would prevent over 50 billion euros per year from being prevented, as well as less incapacity for work and reduced earning capacity save. The report also mentions a more weighty argument: in Germany, up to 140,000 people die every year as a result of their tobacco consumption. (Ad)