Fellow project: "Reasons and limits of health-related self-determination"
German health care policy is affected by two conflictive – at least prima facie – tendencies concerning questions of self-determination. On the one hand, in the health care system increasing importance is ascribed to self-determination and individual responsibility, which can be seen when patients have to accept negative financial consequences for not using preventive medical checkups or for having interventions that are not medically indicated. In this case, referring to self-determination serves as justification for legal consequences. On the other hand, in the area of prevention policy measures are taken or at least discussed that seem to modify the importance of self-determination and one’s responsibility for personal health (for example smoking bans, the taxation of “unhealthy” food and the prohibition of the use of solariums by minors). Both tendencies are criticized harshly as eroding solidarity and being governmental encroachments of the citizens’ private lives, but also welcomed explicitly and demanded. All this shows that reasons and limits of self-determination and individual responsibility are not clear with respect to the social obligations of the government and its interventions and regulation powers.
The time of research at Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald will be used for compiling a monograph that analyzes reasons and limits of self-determination and their relevance for the designing of health care and welfare policy. Special attention will be given to the interrelation of health, self-determination and social injustice. The project will be carried out in intradisciplinary cooperation with Tatjana Hörnle with regard to the general importance of autonomy as the basis of law.