Hospital.Help

Berlin – Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has announced rising contributions to health and nursing care insurance for the coming year. “We will probably see an increase in the contribution rate,” Lauterbach told star in an interview published today. “This is because important reforms have not been implemented in the past,” Lauterbach added. Health insurance companies were outraged by these announcements.

Lauterbach explained that the rising contribution income would also finance hospital reform. If the hospitals did not receive financial support, many of them would not reach the “safe shore of hospital reform”. This must be prevented. “Now is the phase in which we have to spend money, including that of the contributors,” said Lauterbach. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, contribution money should go towards financing the transformation fund, which the federal and state governments are to fund with around 50 billion euros over the next ten years. However, the transformation fund will not start until 2026.

With the structural reforms now being considered, it will be possible to curb costs in the long term. At the same time, Lauterbach stressed that contributors would also benefit “because they would receive better care in return.”

Lauterbach rejected calls from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV-Spitzenverband) for a short-term reform package to avert the impending increase in contributions. “I don’t want to ruin the system by cutting costs now,” stressed the SPD politician. “We need these investments.” One should not now say: “Then let’s just leave everything as it is. That will come back to haunt us in the future.”

Already at the beginning of 2024 and in the middle of the year, several health insurance companies had to significantly increase their additional contributions. By the middle of the year, the deficit in statutory health insurance was already over two billion euros, reports the AOK Federal Association. It is expected that at the beginning of 2025 almost all health insurance companies will have to increase their contributions, health insurance companies by around 0.6 contribution points, nursing care funds by 0.25 points. Similar price increases are also to be expected in private health insurance.

The general contribution to statutory health insurance is currently 14.6 percent, financed equally by employers and employees. In addition, there is an additional contribution that depends on the insurance provider, which the Federal Ministry of Health has set at an average of 1.7 percent for this year. The contribution rate for nursing care insurance is currently 3.4 percent of gross income. For those without children, it is four percent.

Lauterbach has been Health Minister since this legislative period and would like to continue in office. “I like the work. And I would still have ideas for improvements in the health system for another legislative period,” said the SPD politician in response to the question from the starwhether he would still be a minister after the next federal election.

“Today, the Federal Minister of Health announced in an interview that he will stand by and watch the drastic increases in contributions in statutory health insurance. Instead of a plan of action on how the care of the approximately 75 million people with statutory insurance can finally be put back on a solid financial footing, he seems to be calmly announcing ever-increasing additional contributions,” said Doris Pfeiffer, Chairwoman of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds, in response to Lauterbach’s announcement on statutory health insurance contributions.

Due to the spending-driving legislation of the last ten years, the additional contribution rates will have to rise by at least 0.6 contribution points at the beginning of next year. And that does not include the additional costs for hospital reform announced by the minister, warned Pfeiffer.

“After all, 90 percent of the population is insured and cared for by statutory health insurance. Anyone who wants this to continue to function reliably in the future must not completely lose sight of the economic needs and financial possibilities of those insured and their employers.”

Other health insurance associations were similarly outraged: It is “scandalous” that politicians are accepting the contribution increases for employees and employers with a “shrug of the shoulders”, say the board members of the IKKs interest group, Hans-Jürgen Müller and Hans Peter Wollseifer. In doing so, the minister is neither complying with the coalition agreement nor with the Bundestag’s legal mandate to develop a financial reform for the statutory health insurance system.

According to the chairwoman of the AOK Federal Association, Carola Reimann, “Karl Lauterbach is becoming the most expensive Federal Minister of Health of all time.” The minister wants to “continue to spend the money of the contributors with all his might” instead of putting the brakes on spending. She sees the lifting of the budget cap for general practitioners, the weakening of the AMNOG guard rails and the secret reimbursement contributions for medicines as further cost drivers. Effective reforms for the GKV finances would be an “adequate flat rate for people receiving citizen’s allowance” and the reduction of the VAT rate for medicines to seven percent.

“Now it’s official: Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is dropping his political veil and is announcing to contributors, quite bluntly and with great media impact, impending premium increases in statutory health and long-term care insurance,” explains the chairwoman of the BKK umbrella association, Anne-Kathrin Klemm.

Although the money has to be spent, “it has to be refinanced by reducing bureaucracy, redundancies, superfluous and inefficient measures,” Klemm continued. “In the end, the insured will pay a double price: they will have less money in their pockets in the future and at the same time have to live with a deterioration in health care.” The umbrella association of company health insurance funds is therefore calling on the Federal Minister of Health not to impose any further burdens on contributors.

Hospital association contradicts Lauterbach

The German Hospital Association (DKG) does not share the Federal Minister’s analysis that the planned hospital reform is contributing to the current contribution increases. “The Hospital Care Improvement Act does not contain any contribution-related financial support for hospitals in 2025. On the contrary, in his draft law the Minister even promises reduced expenditure by the statutory health insurance funds of 330 million euros in 2025 and even reduced expenditure of one billion euros each in the following years,” explained the Chairman of the Board of the DKG, Gerald Gaß.

Only the minister himself knows how the forecasts in his draft bill and the statements in the interview are connected. These must be “as yet unpublished initiatives from his ministry,” continued Gaß. The transformation fund for hospitals will not begin until 2026, the DKG chairman also pointed out.

The opposition in the German Bundestag also strongly criticised the interview announcements: “Normal and low-income earners are supposed to pay for Lauterbach’s botched health reforms. This exacerbates the justice crisis in our country,” explains Kathrin Vogler, health policy spokeswoman for the Left Party in the Bundestag. In her view, the traffic light government must “finally eliminate the exceptions for higher earners in the statutory health insurance system”. © bee/dpa/afp/aerzteblatt.de