Conflict with Lauterbach
Statutory health insurance physicians do not want to implement mandatory vaccinations in practices
Andreas Gassen has been Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) since March 2014
© Bernd von Jutrczenka / DPA
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wants to quickly introduce compulsory vaccination against the corona virus. But concrete resistance comes from the medical profession.
Opinions differ on compulsory vaccination. Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach is putting pressure on the mandatory corona vaccination to come into force quickly after a decision has been made. In order to immunize unvaccinated people from a possible new corona wave in autumn, vaccination must take effect in spring, “in April or around April, maybe in May,” said Lauterbach on “RTL Direkt”.
The Minister of Health and Chancellor Olaf Scholz support the general obligation to vaccinate, but there should be no red-green government proposal on the matter. Instead, MPs should submit group motions on the subject to Parliament. The CDU has sharply criticized the procedure.
The organized medical profession has now even announced concrete resistance to the project of general vaccination. Andreas Gassen, head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), says he does not want to have the obligation to vaccinate against the corona virus implemented in medical practices. “We will not expect our doctors to carry out vaccination against the will of the patient,” Gassen told the “Bild-Zeitung”. “The practices are not a place to enforce government measures, but live from the relationship of trust between doctor and patient.”
Gassen gave the reason for his attitude in an interview with ntv. From an organizational point of view, it is anything but trivial to enforce compulsory vaccination. “If you implement compulsory vaccination in legislation, you have to have an idea of how it will be implemented operationally,” says Gassen. In the medical profession there is both approval of the introduction of a duty and rejection. Gassen himself is primarily concerned with the organization and the question of how those who are unwilling to be vaccinated should be asked to vaccinate: “It is not to be expected that the practices will be able and willing to do this in addition to their previous work and the vaccination campaign.”
Doctors also refuse to give advice
According to the “Bild”, the panel doctors also reject the obligation to advise those who are unwilling to be vaccinated, as suggested by the North Rhine-Westphalian Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU). The deputy KBV chairman Stefan Hofmeister told the newspaper, “the decision to vaccinate is a political one. If the federal government wants to decide on this, it must also take care of the implementation.”
However, the concrete form of compulsory vaccination has not even been debated in the Bundestag. And in view of 100,000 new infections per day, a dispute between doctors and the health minister is rather superfluous. The result: If the doctors actually stick to their tough line, the previous Piks refusers who were required to vaccinate would have to get their syringes against Corona from local vaccination centers or from the doctors in the public health service.