Homeopathy Coming soon no more cash benefits?

Coming soon no health insurance Homoeopathic services?

(12.07.2010) In order to be able to make savings, those responsible usually first choose ways in which the least possible resistance can be expected. In the health system it is now the homeopathy go to the collar. According to the ideas of the CDU-responsible for the health sector, Jens Spahn, in the future homeopathic services and natural remedies will no longer be included in the catalog of the statutory health insurance. Spahn received support from his SPD counterpart Karl Lauterbach. Only the Greens contradict the plans and reject the removal of homeopathy from the benefits of the statutory health insurance.

Lauterbach wants it after a report of the magazine „The mirror“ prohibit all funds basically, future homeopathy services to take over, although anyway only slightly more than half of the funds they pay. Lauterbach is of the opinion that by taking over the homeopathic services, the coffers of homeopathy would help legitimize people, because "the patients believe that the health insurances only pay for what can be proven to help."

The issue of Spiegel 28/2010 is already devoted to the title page of Homeopathy. „Homeopathy: The big illusion“, it says there. And in the article „Health insurance companies should save themselves homeopathy“ In addition to the statements of Lauterbach pointed out that homeopathy is now a billion dollar business.

Whether it will change something, if it goes by the will of Spahn and Lauterbach, is questionable. Because only half of the funds pay the costs so far and the globules are not particularly expensive, no major savings can be expected here. A kind described by Lauterbach „Adelung of homeopathy“, like the portal „Themes of the time“ in his article „Homeopathy and politics“ describes, should not be a decision criterion, because people only buy funds that help and not the other way round.

The author and journalist Claus G. Fritzsche points out in his blog H.Blog: Homeopathy & Research that the public description of the scientific situation regarding the verifiability of homeopathy is very much influenced by ideological aspects.

The legal and political scientist and since 2005 active chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the health committee, Jens Spahn, further pointed out that the electoral tariffs for natural remedies were introduced under the red-green federal government and he would now like to undo them. Spahn has been announcing for some time that more „reforms“ and savings in the health care system are necessary. This includes, among other things, a further increase of the additional contributions as now decided by the coalition.

Critics, not only from the field of natural medicine, point out that the savings in the field of natural remedies are rather small. The recently appointed Head of the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), Dr. med. Jürgen Windeler, in mid-June publicly complained that many remedies were ineffective. According to a drug report of the health insurance Barmer GEK, the proportion of new drugs without additional benefit is about 40 percent. (Tf)

Image: Marco Korf / Pixelio.de