Plastic Surgery Disasters

Patients Forced to Pay For Unnecessary Operations

Patients in Germany who have suffered complications as a result of cosmetic surgery, tattoos or piercing could soon end up having to pay for the treatment themselves. The government wants to force doctors to report cases to health insurers.

Piercings, tattoos, cosmetic surgery... they can all turn nasty. Now the German government wants body modifiers who get hurt to pay for the damage themselves.

Self-enhancement -- or self-mutilation -- can be a hazardous pursuit. Those opting for tattoos and piercing can end up with allergic reactions or nasty infections, including hepatitis, while cosmetic surgery is also fraught with danger.

The next stop can often be the doctor's surgery or even the emergency room. And in Germany, where it is compulsory to have health insurance, it is the insurance companies that end up footing the bill for these damage-limitation exercises.

But possibly not for much longer. In future, Germans could be forced to cover the costs of clearing up botched body modification themselves, as a result of a new government proposal.

SPIEGEL has learned that Health Minister Ulla Schmidt is working on new legislation that would oblige doctors and hospitals to flag complications resulting from unnecessary procedures to the health insurers, who could then refuse to pay out for the treatment.

The minister had introduced a law earlier this year, as part of a health reform package, which forced the victims of these kinds of procedures to cover the costs of repairing the damage themselves. But the plan failed in practice because doctors refused to squeal on their patients. The new legislation will close off that option by making it compulsory to notify the insurance companies in the case of conditions that have been caused "deliberately or by a procedure that was medically unnecessary."

But doctors have reacted to the proposal with fury. The director of the German Medical Association (BÄK), Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper Monday that the measure was a "general attack on doctor-patient confidentiality." He also warned that the doctors would use "all the means at their disposal" to fight the new law.

Adolf Bauer, president of the German Social Association, a social justice campaign group, accused the minister of trying to make doctors do insurance companies' bidding. Speaking to Tagesspiegel, he warned that the new legislation could be a gateway to refusing cover to other people such as "smokers, paragliders and the obese."

smd/spiegel