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Mathieu Weggeman: “Those causing sickness should pay”

As far as TU/e professor Mathieu Weggeman is concerned, companies that cause sickness should start chipping in on healthcare. Together with Marjolein Smidt, professor at Maastricht University, he wrote an opinion piece to this effect in national newspaper de Volkskrant. Because why should society pay for healthcare costs resulting from pollution by Tata Steel, the addictive effect of gambling or unhealthy food in supermarkets? “We already did this for cigarettes,” Weggeman says, “so why not for other things that make us sick?”

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photo Sakkawokkie / iStock
Mathieu Weggeman. Photo | private collection

This appeal in de Volkskrant of June 21 by Mathieu Weggeman and Marjolein Smidt goes against the neoliberal zeitgeist. As they write themselves: ‘Over the past years, we’ve come to accept that the products and services of profit-driven companies directly contribute to health loss for their clients or employees, without those companies facing the consequences of their actions.’

An example of this way of thinking, Weggeman indicates, is saying that if someone got sick from Tata Steel’s smoke, “they should have moved away from IJmuiden”. A way of thinking that’s not only morally questionable, but that the scientists believe has also become untenable from a societal perspective now that healthcare costs are skyrocketing.

Due for revision

Weggeman, full professor of Organizational Science and Innovation Management at TU/e, looks at things from an organizational science point of view, while full professor of Surgical Oncology Schmidt represents the medical perspective. “While she’s looking at health loss, I’m looking at extra healthcare costs,” is how Weggeman summarizes the difference between them.

However, when it comes to their ideas about the future of healthcare the two scientists agree wholeheartedly: the current system has run its course. “It brought us plenty of good things, but now it’s due for revision,” says Weggeman. In a previous joint opinion piece with Smidt in another national newspaper, NRC, he gave the example of bureaucratic, powerful healthcare insurance companies having become obsolete. “There’s one insurance agent for every two medical specialists,” which Weggeman believes is far too many.

Tata Steel. Photo | Remco Swiers Photography / iStock
Gambling addiction

Businesses, on the other hand, should take a more proactive role in healthcare, Weggeman and Smidt assert. They give three examples in the opinion piece they sent in: the fumes emitted by Tata Steel that have been shown to be carcinogenic, gambling ads that stimulate gambling addiction, and the supermarkets making huge profits on unhealthy but ever so tasty snacks.

As far as Weggeman is concerned, it would make sense to force these parties to reduce their negative influence on public health and contribute financially to the extra costs for oncological care, addiction care, and the treatment of lifestyle diseases, respectively. “But the former isn’t happening enough and the latter isn’t happening at all.”

For cigarettes we did do it, he says. “The revenues from the tobacco excise duties don’t go directly to healthcare, but they do flow into the treasury, which makes it less necessary to cut healthcare costs. It would be even better, however, if companies made a direct contribution to the specific healthcare costs they give rise to.”

Omtzigt

How was the appeal in de Volkskrant received this past summer? “We got many messages of support, for example from a mother whose son isn’t receiving treatment for his gambling addiction because of the long waiting lists for municipal healthcare. We’re also being sent many other examples of companies that are harming public health, such as the oil refinery in Willemstad, Curaçao,” Weggeman says.

And what about the neoliberal zeitgeist? Weggeman is hopeful that the new government to be formed after the elections will bring about change. “In the basic principles for his party Nieuw Sociaal Contract, Pieter Omtzigt places a focus on the social market economy, where enterprises are rooted and integrated in their environment.”

And where they also bear social responsibility for that environment. A form of corporate citizenship, as Weggeman puts it. In other words, a completely different attitude “from that of many companies revolving around shareholders and maximization of profit rather than around making the world a better place.”

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