Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) wants to abolish the financing of homeopathic treatments by statutory funds. “Homeopathy makes no sense as a health insurance benefit,” wrote the SPD politician on the online platform X (formerly Twitter). "The basis of our policy must be scientific evidence." -Tagesschau via Google Translate
He is against homeopathy for a long time but it is still a health insurance benefit in Germany. This means health insurance makes it free for patients.
Resolves YES if Germany passes a law in 2024 such that statutory health insurances may no longer offer to cover homeopathic treatments by default. The law may become effective later (e.g. beginning of 2025).
Resolves NO if no such law is passed by 2025. Also NO, if the change impacts clearly less than half of the current target group (e.g. excluding kids and teens from the change, who are 90% of the target group).
Insurances may still be allowed to offer private supplemental contracts, such contracts need not be prohibited by the law. The point is that insurance companies cannot use the contributions from all insured people. The people receiving homeopathic treatments should be charged somehow (directly or indirectly), hence the "chargeable" in the title.
I sold my shares and will not trade here anymore because it seems the resolution might become tricky.
Related questions
Another issue: must the treatments stop being covered for everyone? Apparently, there are plans to have homeopathy covered by health insurance for children...
@PS Tough question. I feel like little concessions should be fine. However, this seems to be a rather big one. The Securvita example from your link implies that the effect would only be something like a 7% reduction. That is not change but theater.
@PS Deppenhaufen. Not you guys, but politics.
@marktwse Seems I was wrong, not all of the covered treatments are voluntary offers:
Aktuell sind viele Kassen dazu verpflichtet, einige Homöopathie-Kosten zu erstatten, wie beispielsweise verschriebene Globuli für Kinder bis zwölf Jahre. Das sind sogenannte Regelleistungen. Doch viele Kassen bezahlen freiwillig noch mehr Homöopathie-Leistungen, sogenannte Satzungsleistungen. Die Ausgaben steigen dadurch in die Millionenhöhe.
Are we talking about Regelleistungen or Satzungsleistungen?
Probably we could find some § dealing with this currently and look for future changes. But I could only find §34 SGB-V (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/sgb_5/__34.html), but it seems that's the part they don't want to touch.
@Primer There is no concrete proposal yet. The link from @PS contains:
Eine Version, die auf den 19. Dezember 2023 datiert ist, liegt Business Insider vor. Demnach soll Paragraf 11 im Sozialgesetzbuch 5 (SGB V) um folgenden Satz ergänzt werden: „Homöopathische und anthroposophische Arzneimittel sowie homöopathische Leistungen sind als zusätzliche Satzungsleistungen im Sinne dieses Absatzes ausgeschlossen.“
@marktwse Ah, nice, missed that. Then I'd suggest simply taking a change in at least one of §11 or §34 (SGB V) as resolution criterion.
@Primer Although I think the end result might be closer to something like "Will there be any changes to coverage of homeopathy" than to the original question...
@marktwse Homeopathic treatments are not covered by default right now. Some statutory health insurances cover some homeopathic treatments voluntarily.
@Primer The phrasing is unfortunate. It is "by default at some insurance companies" maybe? The change Lauterbach proposes is that insurances can only cover it via private supplementary insurance policies.
I'm not certain how to translate this to english correctly. In german: "JA falls Homöopathie nur noch durch private Zusatzversicherungsverträge finanziert werden kann". Deepl translates this as "YES if homeopathy can only be financed through private supplementary insurance contracts".
@marktwse Maybe:
Will Germany make homeopathy chargeable in 2024?
Will Germany prohibit statutory health insurances from covering homeopathy?
He is against homeopathy for a long time but it is still a health insurance benefit in Germany. This means health insurance makes it free for patients.
He has been opposed to homeopathy for a long time, but currently some statutory health insurances cover some homeopathic treatments voluntarily. [afaik homeopathy is not part of the Leistungskatalog at the moment, rather a freiwillige Zusatzleistung]
Resolves YES if Germany passes a law in 2024 such that homeopathic treatments is not covered by health insurance by default. The law may become effective later (e.g. beginning of 2025).
Resolves YES if Germany passes a law in 2024 (does not have to become effective ithat year) such that statutory health insurances may no longer offer to cover homeopathic treatments by default. Insurances may still be allowed to offer private supplemental contracts, such contracts need not be prohibited by the law.
Resolves NO in 2025.
Resolves NO if no such law is passed by 2025.
@marktwse But this might still leave room for ambiguities, as I read about low double digit millions potential savings. That's not much and might mean this only covers some smaller part of homeopathic benefits, like maybe prescriptions of globuli, but maybe not treatments like accupuncture?
Might make sense to hedge a bit more, something like "passes a law which reduces the number of homeopathic treatments which statutory health insurances are allowed to cover by default"?
@Primer Or just something like "Will Germany pass a law that changes regulation of statutory health insurances' way to deal with homeopathic treatments?"