Reuters
May 21, 2004
Germany downplays drive for health insurance reform
The German government dampened expectations on Friday that it was planning
the rapid overhaul of its national health system with the launch as early as next year of a “citizen insurance” for which all Germans would pay.
Health Minister Ulla Schmidt and Franz Muentefering, chairman of the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) have in the past week appeared to be driving the project forward, with a view to introducing the new insurance system next year.
The system would extend funding of national health insurance to civil servants and the self-employed as well as those on higher salaries, who have so far been able to opt for private coverage.
The proposal is one of the few government reform plans that is popular with its core voters and would spread the burden of health insurance costs, helping trim high non-wage labor costs which the industry says is a factor driving firms broad.
But the ruling SPD is set to make the citizen insurance a main campaign issue in the 2006 elections, Welt newspaper reports in its Saturday edition.
While popular with the public, the citizen insurance would cause pain for private health care insurers who stand to lose business from wealthier and self-employed people, who currently have the option of public or private health care.
Germany has the third highest spending per capita on health care after the United States and Switzerland.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21636410.htm
Comment: Germany’s system of funding health care is one of the world’s most
expensive, yet does not adequately address many of the inequities in health
care. “Universal coverage” is not enough. Many German leaders now seem to
recognize that adopting more principles of the single payer model is the answer to making comprehensive care affordable for everyone.
Watching nations struggle with their “successful” universal programs is instructive for us. It is evermore clear that our highly deficient system of funding care should be replaced by a single payer program.