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Spahn's expensive mask program: "Such surcharges are immoral"

2021-03-20T11:04:29.990Z


Pharmacies were able to earn hundreds of thousands of euros from Jens Spahn's FFP2 mask distribution campaign. The pharmacist Markus Kerckhoff, however, did without profit and gave away many masks. Why?


Icon: enlarge

Protective mask coupon: Six masks for risk groups

Photo: Jürgen Held / imago images

Jens Spahn has to justify himself again.

This time it is about the high costs of the FFP2 mask distribution campaign, which the Federal Minister of Health pushed through against resistance from his own officials.

The state reimbursed pharmacies that distributed FFP2 protective masks to risk groups up to six euros per mask - at a wholesale price of around 1.22 euros at the time.

The action is likely to have cost taxpayers around two billion euros.

But not all pharmacists felt comfortable.

Markus Kerckhoff from Bergisch-Gladbach, for example, explains in an interview with SPIEGEL why his pharmacy gave its customers tens of thousands of masks.

And he denounces the pharmacy lobby.

SPIEGEL:

Mr. Kerckhoff, you gave away loads of FFP2 protective masks: 60,000 in one fell swoop in December.

And when members of corona risk groups came to you with the coupon for six masks, you gave people up to 30 pieces.

Why?

Markus Kerckhoff:

My wife and I don't want to make a profit from the pandemic.

We could have made a lot of money with the mask distribution campaign by the Federal Ministry of Health.

But for us, the focus is on supplying people with protective goods and not on trading.

That is why we have been selling self-made disinfectants at cost price since the beginning of the pandemic.

And that's why we have given our customers more FFP2 masks than they are entitled to: so that people can protect themselves as best as possible.

SPIEGEL:

Jens Spahn has been criticized for the high reimbursement prices for pharmacies: this campaign is likely to have cost taxpayers around two billion euros.

A Berlin pharmacist said: "We have earned ourselves stupidly and stupidly." How much money could you have made from the distribution campaign yourself?

Kerckhoff:

We should initially be reimbursed up to six euros per mask from the state, later it was 3.90 euros.

Our purchase price per item was only about a fifth as high, around 1.20 euros including sales tax.

That's why we were able to spend up to five times as many masks for the tax money.

In total, more than 10,000 six-coupons have been redeemed in our pharmacies.

SPIEGEL:

Roughly calculated, you could have made a margin of more than 200,000 euros.

A lot of money for you: an average German pharmacy does not make a profit of 150,000 euros per year in normal times.

»Some providers have offered people vouchers for Amazon or Saturn on top of that.

That's how big the profit margins were. "

Kerckhoff:

That's right.

But we gave the customer the equivalent - in the form of additional masks.

Do you know: the gross profit ...

SPIEGEL:

... in other words, the spread between purchase and sales price ...

Kerckhoff:

... is usually around 25 percent.

But with the masks it was several hundred percent.

Every pharmacist immediately noticed that this did not fit in with normal commercial business.

When I heard about the six euros, I immediately thought: This is wrong, such surcharges are immoral in a pandemic situation.

SPIEGEL:

Why immoral?

Kerckhoff:

The café across from us is closed and cannot serve coffee.

The fashion business has been closed for months and doesn't know what to do next.

It doesn't fit when a professional group receives such a grant from the state.

That was totally uncomfortable for me.

SPIEGEL:

The Federal Association of German Pharmacists' Associations (ABDA) argues that purchase prices have fluctuated significantly - and that the cost structures of the individual pharmacies are very different.

"Mr. Spahn was badly advised."

Kerckhoff:

Even if you bought the masks for 1.50 euros, the margin was 300 percent.

Such a coupon for six masks was like a cashier's check for 36 euros in the beginning.

Some providers have deliberately exploited this.

In order to get as many coupons as possible, they offered people vouchers for Amazon or Saturn on top of that, or they delivered the goods to their home by masked taxi.

That was how big the profit margins were.

But there were also some pharmacies that gave away masks or donated the money that was taken in too much.

SPIEGEL:

Is Spahn to blame for these excesses?

Kerckhoff:

No.

The decision to distribute the masks through pharmacies was basically the right one.

After all, in December there was a risk that Christmas would become a superspreader event.

But the fee was too high.

Mr. Spahn was badly advised, he did not know the prices.

When it was noticed, he lowered the reimbursement a little.

SPIEGEL:

Your pharmacists' association protested this vigorously.

Kerckhoff:

The ABDA has to be asked why it accepted these inflated prices and why it did not intervene.

In doing so, she has put many honest pharmacists in an uncomfortable position.

At the beginning of the distribution campaign, pharmacies even received a lump sum of money from the state, regardless of how many masks they actually issued.

On average, that was more than 20,000 euros per pharmacy - without proof that you had even given out a single mask.

SPIEGEL:

What did you do with the money?

Kerckhoff:

We then bought the 60,000 masks and distributed them to risk groups, with the indication that these masks were financed from tax revenues.

"We received a warning from the competition headquarters because we gave masks for free."

SPIEGEL:

The ABDA criticizes actions like those taken by other pharmacists.

She accuses people like you of using the mask distribution for their own marketing purposes and of creating the "false impression" that the majority of companies have made inappropriate profits.

Kerckhoff:

Everyone makes their own picture, given the facts.

In the meantime we have even received a warning from the competition headquarters because we made formal mistakes.

SPIEGEL:

How did that happen?

Kerckhoff:

Apparently another pharmacy had complained about us.

I don't want to tell anyone what is right or wrong, and some pharmacies are not doing well financially.

But we have lived our attitude since the pandemic began.

Yesterday a woman spoke to me at the bakery and said: "You did well." For me, that's the best reward.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-03-20

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