analysis
Status: 05/11/2022 10:14 a.m
What he managed to do as a professor, Karl Lauterbach no longer really wants to succeed in the ministry. He is quite active though. And that’s exactly the problem.
hospital reform. Corona autumn concept. Digitalization. Cannabis Legalization. triage law. Undeterred, Karl Lauterbach whirls on. The restless Minister of Health – now that the war in Ukraine has temporarily pushed the ongoing topic of Corona out of the headlines – could also come to rest. At least that’s what some of his companions in politics and the health sector wish for.
Others say that Karl is acting erratically. The role backwards is his parade discipline. Angry tongues pronounce, he just can’t do ministry, we’ve always said that.
Draft Triage Act
Most recent example: the Triage Act. A draft bill from the Ministry of Health, coordinated with the Department of Justice, was circulated at the weekend. Hidden in it: a medical-ethical taboo breach. The law is intended to regulate who gets the ventilation place when capacities become scarce and no longer sufficient for all patients.
Particularly explosive: the ex-post triage. This provides that a patient with a lower chance of survival is switched off by the machines in order to be able to treat a patient with a better chance of recovery. Three doctors should decide that by mutual agreement.
Horror, incomprehension, criticism
The reactions were not long in coming: incredulous horror from the Greens and SPD, after all they had actually agreed with Lauterbach and clearly voted against the ex-post triage. The Caritas association sent sharp warnings to Berlin: “Under this heading, the discussion about triage is gradually changing – from an instrument of medical assessment in acute emergency situations to a legitimation of the rationing of medical services according to usefulness and quality of life “, says Caritas President Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa.
At the beginning of the week, Karl Lauterbach rowed back. “Ex post-triage is ethically unacceptable and neither doctors, patients nor relatives can be expected. That’s why we won’t allow it,” the minister said through his spokesman.
Not the first U-turn
So there it was again, the U-turn, Lauterbach’s pressurized reverse roll. It’s not the first. At the beginning of April, Lauterbach also received the quarantine order live on television, which he had agreed with the federal states the day before. He must have realized very quickly that ending mandatory isolation when the number of infections was high wasn’t such a good idea. Oh yes, and the convalescent order also enjoyed only a short lifespan after the states had put Lauterbach in the pincers.
Too much, too fast, too little thought through?
Lauterbach, the restless minister, makes mistakes. The sweet magic of new beginnings has given way to the heaviness of the burden of government. What the professor managed to do in the opposition and from the sidelines – to explain things and get people involved – is no longer really possible in office.
The failure of compulsory vaccination, for which he so desperately campaigned, is also his defeat. And in the struggle for the right corona policy, the traffic light is more yellow than red.
Or as someone who is actually well disposed puts it: Karl has absolutely no assertiveness towards the FDP. He seems driven, things and processes happen too often uncoordinated. And that FDP Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann probably wanted to enforce the ex post triage. But hardly anyone thought that he would ever make it into the ministerial office and so one should not write him off too soon.