Antitrust law New rules for health insurance companies?

Antitrust: Bundestag advises on 15 June in first reading on new rules for health insurance

13/06/2012

The Siemens Health Insurance SBK supports the current plans of the Federal Government for a stricter antitrust and competition law for public health insurance companies. Two days before the first reading of the law in the Bundestag, the SBK promotes its approval in all parliamentary groups in the Bundestag.

The "Draft of an Eighth Law amending the Law against Restraints of Competition" will be held on Friday, June 15, in the Bundestag in
treated first reading. It provides for strict rules on merger control and assigns a key role to the Cartel Office. Exactly these
The key role of the cartel guard SBK wants for the health market. In a fact sheet, that on Tuesday evening to the
Factions in the German Bundestag, SBK outlines which actions the Bundeskartellamt is currently working on. For example, the antitrust authorities smashed a cartel on paper plates and chipboard, imposed fines on the manufacturers of dishwashing liquid and instant cappuccino, and inspected the mergers of potato suppliers, aerated concrete, and inner can coatings. If one were to deny at the same time the control over the market of the statutory health insurance companies, which amount to 185 billion euro, then this would have no relation.

The project is controversial but not among the German citizens. On behalf of the SBK, the opinion research institute forsa had asked over 1,000 Germans about it: 76 percent believe that the Cartel Office should also supervise the statutory health insurance funds more when it comes to mergers and contracts. Only 16 percent find it should be here for the statutory health insurance exceptions.

And another number, the SBK puts the struggling to a decision parliamentarians to the heart: Up to 350 billion euros, the energy turnaround
cost by the year 2030, so the most recent estimate of the price for a sustainable ecological power generation in Germany. This amount is also paid by the statutory health insurance funds in the years 2012 and 2013 alone.