Mur claimed that a system comparable to that for setting car insurance prices – whereby "you pay less if you don't have any accidents" – should be applied to the field.
"Citizens have to understand that health care is expensive," he said. "Everyone has to have in mind that we must manage resources in a good way. The best way to learn this is to be made to pay something."
Mur cited Spain, where visiting the doctor is free of charge, as an example of "abuse of the system". Spaniards visit the doctor an average of 40-50% more frequently than in the rest of Europe.
Health care has been widely excluded from budget cuts in Europe for "political reasons," Mur noted, saying this posed further problems in organising fairer payment for health care.
"Whilst large-scale programmes are necessary in health care, IT investments rarely see a short-term return and governments have a lot of difficulty implementing large-scale public programmes these days whilst cuts are being made. In some cases, different political parties are even running health care at these different levels."
Instead, making citizens more responsible for the costs of their health and using the technologies available to deal with problems more effectively would be the best way forward, Mur said.
"We need to find a mechanism for managing limited resources and educate citizens that they must only use healthcare systems when it is really needed," he said.
Moreover, obstacles to the uptake of new technologies were higher among healthcare professionals than citizens, he said, because it can sometimes disturb the re-organisation of work between nurses and doctors.
