Health Care In Nazi Germany

According to Michael H. Kater "physicians became Nazified more thoroughly and much sooner than any other profession, and as Nazis they did more in the service of the nefarious regime than any of their extra-professional peers."^[1][2][3] After 1933, physicians joined the Nazi Party in greater numbers than did any other profession. By 1935, almost a third of the non-Jewish German physicians belonged to the Nazi Party. From 1925 to 1944, the per cent of doctors in the party was almost three times as high as in the population as a whole.^[4]

The National Association of Sickness Fund Physicians [2] was established in 1933 as a national bargaining unit to replace the numerous, more local, associations with which sickness funds had negotiated in the past. Thus, several thousand sickness funds were forced to deal with a single organization, or single payer, that held a legal monopoly over medical services. The drive by the medical profession to transform the organization and delivery of health care services from self-governing sickness funds to physician-controlled services was complete.^[5]

See also[edit]

• Single payer
• Universal health care
• Socialized medicine

Notes[edit]