AOK boss criticizes health care reform

AOK boss criticized black and yellow health care reform

(09.08.2010) The Federal Government's plan to treat the statutory health insurance companies as private companies in the future is met with massive criticism in the industry. So warns z. B. Herbert Reichelt, head of the AOK, in an interview with the „Frankfurter Rundschau“ Before „bad consequences“ For the patients and bases his argument in particular on the antitrust law, which would also be subject to the coffers as private companies. Consequently, patients face long-term high additional costs if the basic principles of health insurance are suddenly attacked by antitrust law.

He thinks primarily of the „To exclude decisions of the common self-administration of the funds, ineffective medicines or treatment methods from the service catalog.“ If these are doubted on the basis of antitrust law and no longer exist in the future, significant additional costs would be incurred, which would have to be borne by additional contributions from the insured parties alone. Equally affected could be the discount agreements of the health insurances with the various pharmaceutical companies. For example, the AOK system alone saves around 500 million euros a year. If all rebate agreements are returned to court due to antitrust laws and procedures that have long been decided in favor of the health insurance funds are being rolled back up, the insured persons face considerably higher costs.

Reichelt stressed that „Health insurance companies (...) are not profit-oriented companies, whose competition with one another must be directed by antitrust law into orderly paths.“ Cartels are not formed by health insurance companies to maximize profit or harm consumers and therefore should not fall under antitrust law, Reichelt continues. A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Health responded that the Union and FDP had agreed to apply the antitrust law only to certain contractual relationships in order to achieve a middle-class-friendly solution, while preventing greater market power in contract negotiations

The additional contribution also meets with criticism of criticism and he makes it clear that in particular insured with low income such. B. the beneficiaries of ALG II or retirees are burdened with these additional payments too much. He therefore calls in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau that the additional contributions of pensioners from the pension insurance and the Hartz IV recipients should be taken over by the employment agency. Otherwise, according to Reichelt, the number of dunning and debt collection procedures would rise massively, which would lead to enormous administrative burdens and massive problems for those affected. The planned social compensation, which is to seize the additional contributions of low-income and support them, the AOK boss also critical, because how the government wants to create an unbureaucratic balance, which also works in practice, remains open. (Sb)