German Doctors' "Superfluous" Prescribing

The German local white-collar health fund federation says that doctors are spending at least 5 billion Deutschemarks ($3.37 billion) a year on "superfluous and medically unnecessary treatments," according to a report by ARD-television, in a Panorama program quoting federation spokesman Eckherd Schupeta and other health fund experts.

The program says the funds base their criticism on an examination of their own accounts and medical data, and a series of studies, so far unpublished, of research undertaken by the Social Ministry of the state of Lower Saxony. These studies suggest that doctors are providing treatment for financial reasons and not only for medical purposes.

While various fund organizations have made proposals for tackling the situation, the federation of local health funds is pressing for the removal from reimbursement of drugs whose medical value is disputed. It estimates the cost of prescribing these "questionable" drugs at around 6 billion marks ($4.05 billion) a year, and argues that at least 2 billion marks a year could be saved through intensified prescribing of generics. The maintenance of current fixed-level price support for patented "non-innovative" drugs would also save around 1.5 billion marks, according to some health fund estimates.