Gröhe wants to enforce vaccination

Prevention Act to strengthen precautionary measures

03/21/2015

With the „Law on Health Promotion and Prevention“ (Prevention Act), which will be discussed on Friday in the first reading in the Bundestag, especially the health precaution of children and adolescents should be strengthened. Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe (CDU) wants to use the law to emphasize the importance of immunization. Vaccination is no longer taboo, he told the news agency „dpa“. In the future, parents whose children are enrolled in a day care center should seek medical advice on the recommended vaccinations, which will be used to provide proof of registration. This is intended to vaccinate more children. At the same time, vaccination should remain voluntary.

By Präventionsgesetz Impflücke should be closed
Gröhe wants to close with the prevention law and the Impflücke in adolescents. „If this does not succeed, vaccination must not be a taboo, "Gröhe told the news agency. „Young people and young adults, in particular, are still lacking important vaccinations, such as measles. "The law took important steps to increase the willingness to vaccinate. „We need to use all routine health examinations to check vaccine protection, "Gröhe continued. „In the parliamentary deliberations on the prevention law, all possibilities must be put on the table that help to protect more children and adults against dangerous infectious diseases. "The law on prevention should come into force in the summer, „in time for the cold season, when it usually comes increasingly to disease waves ".

Federal Center for Health Education to support health insurance in prevention
The statutory health insurance companies criticize the proposed legislation due to the planned financing. The board of the GKV-Spitzenverbandes, Gernot Kiefer, spoke to the news agency of a cross-subsidization by insured funds. From 2016, the health insurances are to invest seven instead of the previously paid € 3.09 per insured per year in health care. For adolescents up to the age of 18, an additional examination is planned.

The coffers see particularly critically that of the 220 to 240 million euros of additional expenditure, which come to them, approximately 35 million euro of the Federal center for health education are to be made available. This should the health insurance companies „in the provision of prevention services ". „For the prevention tasks of individual health insurance companies, there is no need for a centralized federal authority as a subcontractor. If the federal government wants to finance its own authority better, then he must do it himself and not from the purses of contributors, "said Kiefer.