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An unhealthy health care reform in Switzerland, part 2
In my last blog I wrote about the Swiss healthcare reform which is proposed by the Swiss Council of ministers and about a controversial measure to introduce budget limits to outpatient healthcare, putting expenditure limits on treatment. The details are explained in my last blog. This measure is almost universally opposed by those affected: by…
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An unhealthy health care reform in Switzerland
The Swiss Federal Council plans to ration health care as part of health system reform. The immediate purpose of rationing is to reduce costs. As a patient advocate, I am adding my voice to a broad coalition who criticise this proposal as misguided. Will rationing health care reduce financial health costs? And how will rationing…
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Vulnerability, a word for our times
Recently I took part in a clinical trial to help establish how my medication might affect the course of a Covid-19 infection. To start I needed to give a blood sample by pricking my finger and putting a few drops into a tiny vial. After reading the instructions and laying out the equipment, I pricked…
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Climbing the Eiger at 60?
“You’ve got to be kidding!” said my friend Jeannie about my plan to climb the Eiger over the Mittellegi ridge. Or maybe she thought that I was mad. After all, I have suffered from severe Spondyloarthritis and moderately severe Inflammatory Bowel Disease for decades. However, the medication I take has a huge positive effect on…
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Patient leadership in health care?
“We cannot rest until there are Patient CEOs in every healthcare organisation around the world” Michael Seres 1969-2020.
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Another Patient Journey: 2019 was a good year
Picking up the story from my last blog Was 2019 really that bad? my doctors advised that I should stop the TNF blocker drugs, that had enabled me to live a normal life for the past three years, before undergoing cancer surgery. That made sense. These drugs work by dampening the immune system. I could…
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Was 2019 really that bad?
If you’d told me in March 2019 that I wouldn’t write another blog on “arthritis and me” until 2020, I would have laughed and said you didn’t know me! I had started two new drafts. They will be finished one day, but first I have to write about breast cancer and get that off my…
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A new F-word: FASTING – Love or Hate?
Next week is Ash Wednesday when the Christian fasting period called Lent begins. I’ve never fasted. It always seemed rather uncomfortable and difficult. Until now I couldn‘t see any benefit and feel that managing AS I have enough to do. The more I read and try things out, the more convinced I am that diet…
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Am I really what I eat?
In the bad old days when life seemed to be filled only with pain, I used to comfort myself and find moments of peace with the thought: „I am not my body!“ If I could see myself at a level of consciousness where my soul and not my body was in charge, then the pain…
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Have Disease – Target – Kill Something
I recently came across an interview with Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Indian-American physician, oncologist and author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. I would like to share his thoughts. His ideas show how medical research could be changing its analytical paradigm and how this change might open a path to better care…
A life free from the burdens of rheumatic disorders
