German Medical Fraud

German Negative List "Not Against Law"

The German government's exclusion of "uneconomic" drugs from the list of products prescribable for public-sector health fund patients is not an infringement of the Basic Law, the federal social court, the BSG, has decided.

Ruling that the only exceptions to the ban on prescribing embodied in the negative list were drugs "specified for a particular form of therapy," the court thus rejected a case brought by a Cologne drug company, 98% of whose sales were of drugs used in various forms of enzyme therapy before the introduction of the negative list. These drugs were assessed as being "partially" no longer prescribable when the list was launched because of their composition.