Rethink On German Health Care Reform

The German coalition government has agreed to consider "constructive recommendations" put forward by experts at parliamentary health committee hearings on the government's third-stage health reform proposals, Health Minister Horst Seehofer has said.

The rethink will include consideration of what control individual health funds will have over patient charges imposed for medicines. The government plan would assign responsibility for management of the charges to each fund, but the plan has met opposition from drug companies producing either "controversial" or over-the-counter drugs, who fear the funds will load the patient charges in this area.

The public-sector funds recorded a deficit of 8.7 billion Deutschemarks ($5.7 billion) in the first nine months of 1996, said Mr Seehofer. During 1991-95, spending by the funds rose 32% to 229 billion marks overall, while gross salaries and wages of insured people rose only 15%. The funds spent 6.1 billion marks more on health care in the first nine months of 1996 than in the same period of 1995; government supporters say this proves the health service is by no means being ruined by economies, and that spending has to be reduced to what is medically necessary.