As far as is known, homeopathy’s recipe for success is the mini-mini-dose, the big effect on the subtle and small. In this respect, it is actually quite fitting that the few millions that the statutory health insurance companies spend every year on these miracle globules are not at all significant in view of the several hundred billion euros in healthcare services. In the annual balance, homeopathic drugs appear in the blink of an eye, so homeopathic doses are not really a big problem.
And yet there has been a great deal of controversy about this for many years. Because many statutory health insurance companies reimburse their insured for homeopathic treatments; these are very popular, the cash registers use them to recruit members. But that also means that all insured persons pay for a treatment that is simply ineffective apart from the placebo effect – this has been shown and shown again and again by numerous studies and meta-reviews.
If you want to spend your money on overpriced sugar balls, you’re in for a treat
And so it is only logical that Schwurbel balls have to disappear from the health insurance supply, as Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) is now (once again) publicly demanding. Because although homeopathy is not significant in terms of the volume of expenditure, according to Lauterbach, “it has no place in a science-based health policy”, he said to him mirror.
It’s not (only) about money, because if you want to spend your hard-earned euros on overpriced sugar balls, you’re in for a treat. The problem is rather that the support of some health insurance companies gives the public the impression that there must be medicine in the beads somehow. Unfortunately, this softening of the boundaries of science opens the door to non-scientific thinking, which is sometimes strange and sometimes unfortunately can also be very dangerous for the health of individuals and the democratic cohesion of all.
If the health insurance companies actually have a few million euros left over in the future, they could invest them to really improve the health care of their members. If you look at the exhausted faces of the nursing staff, in ailing doctor’s offices or broken-down children’s clinics, for example, every euro would be well invested here.