Pluralism of medical practice in West Germany

Abstract: A consumer based health service may well be pluralistic; ie. it will offer modern scientific medicine and complementary medicine. The nature of such complementary health care Provision will vary according to local needs. In West Germany we see health care initiatives which are depentent upon three factors of availability:economic; according to third party methods of reimbursement (government or private health insurance), cultural; according to the legal, historical and philosophical traditions of therapeutic freedom ('Therapiefreiheit), and social; according to community needs.In West Germany such a Provision is located within a political context which sponsors initiatives by allocating the appropriate resources. Consumer based health care is best delivered in a climate of tolerance and active collaboration between practitioners, legislators and administrators. Such a climate fosters quality of health care. (Please note no statistics are available for distribution of complementary practitioners for West Germany. Different disciplines have their own statistics, but there is no forum for sharing this information).

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