Clinics across Bavaria are in great distress because health insurance payments do not cover the increased costs. Visiting Zwiesel, where a clinic boss is now demanding compensation from Health Minister Lauterbach.
The uprising begins at the very edge of Bavaria, almost on the Czech border. There is a lot of forest and winding roads there – and in the Regen district there are also two clinics in the towns of Viechtach and Zwiesel. Each of them has exactly 166 beds, so few that they only play a subordinate role in the reform concepts of Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). But so many that they are important for supplying the people in the region. For spinal surgery, for example, the patients come from the neighboring district, says Christian Schmitz: “The fact that we only have 166 beds doesn’t mean that we can’t do it.”