Health insurance companies criticize doctors' fees

The statutory health insurance companies criticize the further increase in medical fees. Blame is the black and yellow federal government.

The statutory health insurance companies criticize the increase in physician fees for the coming year by about 120 million euros. The rising physician fees would have to carry the cash patients, they were thus the „loser“, as it was called.

The fees for doctors will increase again in the coming year by more than 120 million euros. Blame for the massive increase in the opinion of the Association of statutory health insurance, the black and yellow federal government. „The well-paid doctors are getting even more and the purses of the contributors are getting empty“, criticized the deputy chairman of the health insurance central association, Johann-Magnus von Stackelberg, to the newspaper „Frankfurter Rundschau“ in the context of the increase in cash contribution rates decided for 2011. In the state of Thuringia alone, fees rise by 24.1 percent. To the public it is claimed that the increase in fees is a saving in the course of health care reform. But the coffers certainly see it differently. The savings contribution of the doctors consists only in the fact that the increase in the fees was not quite as high as the medical associations had demanded.

The doctors' representatives had negotiated a rise in fees of one billion euros at the beginning of October. Under pressure from the state of Bavaria, this sum was increased by a further 120 million euros in the final negotiations of the Federal Government on the health care reform and the drug savings package. According to the Association of Statutory Health Insurance (GKV), the fees rose between 2007 and 2009 by an average of 11.3 percent. (sb, 31.10.2010)

Also read:
Strong increase in doctors' fees
Fee reform: Doctors earned more in 2009
Additional contributions due to increase in doctors' fees?