[International developmental trends in life insurance medicine 1971-1995]

This retrospective of the eventful quarter of a century up to 1995 presents in brief sketches an international survey of developments with a bearing on insurance medicine. It identifies principle events in the field of clinical medicine that have had an effect on long-term prognoses and shows how they have been accounted for in the process of rating on the basis of insurance medicine prognoses. It highlights the main aspects of the scenarios from the 1970s down to the early years of the 1990s and illuminates in detail the developments in Germany. Finally, in the chapter "Life insurance medicine in the year 2000", there is a cautious "forecast on our own behalf", which names eleven points of development which contain possible messages for the future. In the final comment, the concern is expressed that life insurers and the insurance industry as a whole have not yet fully recognized the cost-benefit effect of insurance medical officers. A major role is played in this context by the increasingly important ethical guidelines.