Federal Minister of Health in Israel: In Search of a New Image

Karl Lauterbach started out as one of the most popular traffic light ministers, then he struggled between the FDP and Corona rules. Now he wants to advance digitization – with new impulses from Israel.

The Federal Minister of Health is in his element: at an altitude of 11,500 meters, somewhere above the Greek islands, Karl Lauterbach in the Airbus A340 “Konrad Adenauer” tells us how much he is looking forward to the many exciting encounters in Israel and that this trip has a long history .

Oliver Salet
ARD Capital Studio

In September 2021 – at that time Karl Lauterbach was a widely respected health expert – he was invited by the Israeli Minister of Health. Even if Lauterbach hadn’t become Minister of Health, “I would definitely have flown, just not in this government plane,” he jokes with the journalists traveling with him, who, like him, all wear masks without exception.

Mixed political record

At home in Germany, things have been rather moderate lately. The new Infection Protection Act has been passed by the Bundestag, but the FDP had to make concessions in Lauterbach, resulting in a patchwork quilt. Face masks will remain mandatory on long-distance trains from October, on local trains the federal states decide this, but on airplanes the mask requirement will be abolished.

After all – Lauterbach was still able to enforce the mask requirement in doctor’s offices. This creates confusion and pure hatred in parts of the population. The health minister feels the anger every day, from hostilities on Twitter – “you think we’re incredibly stupid” – to demonstrations right in front of his office window.

Lauterbach has made an amazing change from one of Germany’s most popular politicians, who explained the corona virus with great expertise on talk shows and was seen by many as the desired health minister, to one of the most endangered politicians in the country.

Farewell to the “Corona Minister”?

This is another reason why Lauterbach wants to get away from the image of the Corona Minister, because there are projects with which he believes he can win more. He has already started the e-prescription, the prestige project is the electronic patient file, in which data from millions of patients is stored digitally and can later also be evaluated for research purposes.

“Germany can still learn a lot from Israel here,” says Lauterbach with some admiration. In Germany, not only the Federal Data Protection Officer but also 18 data protection officers from the federal states have a say in data transfer. There are great concerns about storing and evaluating the medical data of millions of Germans digitally.

Praise for Israeli way

In Israel, the hurdles are not as high – that’s one of the reasons why the country is further ahead than Germany when it comes to digitization. That’s another reason why Lauterbach seems to be enjoying the trip to the fullest. “I’m delighted,” Karl Lauterbach can be heard beaming in Jerusalem Hall in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. His neighbor, the Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, likes to hear that. Lauterbach enthusiastically praises Israel’s successes in fighting the pandemic and the close cooperation with Germany.

The minister gets particularly excited when he addresses the item on the program that seems to get him really excited: a visit to the renowned Weizmann Institute, where he wants to find out more about artificial intelligence. Then the scientist Lauterbach breaks out of the Minister of Health.

He would have loved to have stayed longer, he says. This, in turn, promptly earns him another invitation from Horowitz. And Lauterbach insists that the protocol state that he should come back.

Thoughtful words at Yad Vashem

When visiting the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, a must for political visitors from Germany, one experiences a withdrawn, thoughtful minister. Lauterbach, who as Federal Minister of Health is one of the most endangered politicians in Germany, writes in the memorial’s guest book:

Later in the day, when he discussed the pandemic again at a round table with experts from the Israeli health system, Lauterbach asked his counterpart how they deal with fake news in connection with the pandemic. Instead of an answer there is laughter. In Israel, too, they obviously don’t have all the answers for the minister.