As of: March 22, 2024, 3:15 p.m
By: Amy Walker
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The federal government wants to provide hospitals with financial support with a new law.
But it is probably not the federal government that should pay - but the citizens.
Berlin – The Federal Ministry of Health is currently working on an extensive hospital reform, which is intended in particular to put the financing of the clinics on a better footing.
The reform has several components and is difficult for laypeople to understand - but that's exactly when it's worth taking a closer look.
At the weekend, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) presented a draft law that - if confirmed - would have far-reaching consequences for those paying contributions to statutory health insurance companies.
“Once the reputation is ruined, things are handled completely unabashedly”: Criticism of the reform comes from all sides
The draft of the unwieldy Hospital Care Improvement Act - colloquially known as “hospital reform” - aims to adjust remuneration at clinics and thus prevent clinics from dying.
In addition, a so-called “transformation fund” is to be set up from which clinics can receive funds if they need to make investments but do not have enough money to do so.
The money can be applied for, for example, to expand telemedicine offerings or to set up new centers for the treatment of “rare, complex or serious diseases,” as the draft states.
This transformation fund is to be filled with 50 billion euros by 2035.
Half of this is borne by the states, the other half is to be provided from the funds of the statutory health insurance companies.
And that's exactly where the catch is: In order to raise the 25 billion euros for the fund (2.5 billion euros every year until 2035), the health insurance companies will almost certainly increase the health insurance contributions.
“This would mean that the insured would once again fall victim to an unconstitutional misappropriation of contribution funds to finance original state tasks.
The social security funds are intended to finance operating costs and not to compensate for the deficits of infrastructure reforms.
The courts must stop this at the latest,” warns Franz Knieps, CEO of the umbrella organization of company health insurance companies (BKK), in a statement.
“Once the reputation is ruined, things are handled completely unabashedly,” Knieps continued on the minister’s instructions.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
Michaela Engelmeier from the German Social Association also criticizes this form of financing in an interview with
Ippen.Media
: “Half of the fund – i.e. up to 25 billion euros – should be taken by the federal government from the liquidity reserve of the statutory health insurance and thus solely from the contribution funds of those with statutory health insurance financed.
This is not a fair distribution, because all citizens benefit from the hospital reform and not just those with statutory health insurance.
Therefore, the transformation fund must be financed from tax revenues.”
The chairwoman of the AOK federal association, Carola Reimann, makes a similar statement: “As feared, the financing of the hospital renovation should be borne solely at the expense of the statutory health insurance and thus at the expense of those paying contributions - without involving the federal government or private health insurance.
“This is not only unfair to those paying contributions, but also counterproductive,” it said in a statement.
Contributions will have to increase by 0.2 percent
It is not yet clear how high the contributions will be each year.
However, the chairman of the DAK, Andreas Storm, calculates: “The general contribution rate would have to increase by 0.2 percentage points just to finance the transformation fund.”
So from today 14.6 to 14.8 percent.
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That might not sound like much at first.
But one takes into account the fact that not only health insurance contributions are increasing, but pension contributions will also rise significantly in the coming years - as decided by the traffic light government with the pension package II - and the contribution to the nursing care funds also increased last year.
“This is a classic redistribution from bottom to top.
Not involving the privately insured and the civil servants at all is completely unacceptable,” says Andreas Storm of the Augsburger Allgemeine.
He therefore expects that the plan will not hold up in court.
“We consider the federal government’s planned approach to be constitutionally untenable, namely to pass on the majority of the financing to the health insurance companies, because the statutory health insurance is only responsible for providing the ongoing costs.”
According to the government's wishes, the hospital reform should be passed this year.
The draft will first go to departmental coordination and must be approved by the cabinet.