Heart disease is the most common cause of death in Germany. 90 percent could be prevented with better precautions. Karl Lauterbach now wants to address this by law.
Berlin – Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 358,219 people died from this in 2022. Through timely prevention, the risk of a heart attack in particular could be identified earlier. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) would now like to start there with a new law, the “Heart Law”.
Karl Lauterbach wants mandatory heart screening
As
Bild am Sonntag
reports, regular heart care should become a health insurance benefit in the future. The cabinet should discuss this before the summer break so that the law can come into force at the beginning of next year. In the future, health insurance companies would be obliged to have all their insured persons aged 25, 35 and 50 examined for their risk of heart attack. “We want to use a voucher system to ask everyone across Germany for children and young people, 25-year-olds, 35-year-olds and 50-year-olds to have their values measured: blood pressure, including the risk factor of diabetes,” said Lauterbach
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. He wants to significantly reduce the number of cardiovascular diseases in Germany, which is very high compared to international standards.
“Heart Law” is intended to help even five-year-olds
According to the plans, patients should receive something like a voucher, which will later be processed via the electronic patient file. “And with this voucher you can then have your blood values determined. And if the values are abnormal, you can start treatment through your family doctor,” says Lauterbach.
According to the report, the Federal Minister of Health wants to record the risk of heart attack even in five-year-old children as part of the U9 examination. “For children who have a family history, you have to start in childhood, ideally for five-year-olds,” said Lauterbach. If this is not done for children with a familial metabolic disorder, the blood vessels between the ages of 25 and 30 are typically as bad as when talking about 80-year-olds, said the Federal Health Minister.
Support services also announced for cholesterol medications
But not only should preventive examinations be increased, health insurance companies should also provide their patients with more support with medication that is necessary to minimize the risk factors of a heart attack in advance. The law also stipulates that health insurance companies should cover the costs of “cholesterol-lowering drugs”, especially so-called “statins”, to a much greater extent. “We will significantly expand the reimbursement of medications so that no one here has to live with this risk factor of high cholesterol levels,” he emphasized.
Another big risk factor is smoking. Something should change here too: Lauterbach is planning to significantly expand the offerings for smoking cessation as a health insurance benefit. He thinks it could make a difference if smokers could also receive medication to help them quit as a health insurance benefit, or if doctors received a fee for offering smoking cessation. “There is no disease so deadly where so much death is unnecessary. And it is sad that we have achieved so little in Germany,” says Lauterbach. Because 90 percent of all cardiovascular diseases could be prevented with better prevention.
(jh/AFP)