Sounds great to most of us. Once a week we get an injection of a modern medicine and it ensures that we lose weight. It will be effortless and won’t have too many side effects either. Actually, we have nothing to fear.
Of course, the weight loss will only last as long as we go in for more and more injections every week. Once we’re done with that, we’ll be back to where we were before. It’s a little doping for every obese person, you could say.
Yes, it would undoubtedly be better if we walked more, or even swam, cycled or ran. That’s clear, everyone knows that. But who has time for these things with all the worries, right? Those who have not experienced the sufferings of the current generations cannot know how complicated it is for us and how often it happens that we have to end the day willy-nilly with a bottle of wine or a few glasses of beer.
But seriously now – we are at the top of the world in excuses and also in alcohol consumption. That is also why for decades I have had patients sitting in my clinic who are very well aware that they should change their lifestyle, but in real life they are unable to do so.
They would like, at least that’s what they say, to start doing things completely differently and end their day in marathons, cycling or in the gym. But it doesn’t always work out for them for some completely objective reason. On the other hand, they know all the TV series, they prefer not to step on the scale, and if they really have to do it in the doctor’s office, then they empty all the contents of their pockets, take off their shoes and, if possible, strip down to their underwear, just to the number on the display was as low as possible. It’s such a traditional awkward moment. And then they usually look surprised and claim that it shows them at least five kilos less at home.
This is exactly what one type of classic Czech patient looks like. But let’s try to turn it around and ask ourselves whether the behavior of various Czech health care reformers could not be described in a similar way. After all, we have known for many years that the entire system would need fundamental changes, and we have even described them quite clearly during that time. The only differences are whether someone imagines a system more similar to the socialist one, or whether we would prefer to see Czech medicine and its administration more similar to that of Germany or the Netherlands – with the possibility of greater choice and an individual approach, even at the cost of an additional fee.
In any case, none of the listed options could support a number of inefficiencies that are firmly embedded in the current system.
In many cases, this is an irrational accumulation of centralized care in Prague, while the areas of the former Sudetenland in particular have been empty from a medical point of view for decades. The demand for the centralization of demanding care, but at the same time a reasonable coverage of the country with medical capacities, is highly rational.
It also makes no sense to break up medicine into dozens, in the near future perhaps hundreds of fields and subfields, each of which will be devoted to negligible numbers of Czech doctors. It is no different with the chronic circumvention of the labor code and overtime hours.
And what will happen to the youngest generation of doctors, when the guaranteed table salaries in Slovakia and in our German-speaking neighbors are tens of thousands of crowns higher? The puzzle is really not difficult. Just like the so-called foot election.
Please remember the beginning of this text. If we think that someone or something will solve the problem for us, we are wrong. A person will never be permanently well with his sedentary lifestyle, overweight and high alcohol intake. It usually progresses from high blood pressure to diabetes and then to heart attack or stroke.
It is a spiral that is practically always one-way. And it is similar with our entire healthcare system. Its extensive development based on the mindless influx of money has no future. We cannot do without fundamental cultivation and qualitative change. So we absolutely need to find someone who can do that.
