At the beginning of the year, Health Minister Lauterbach announced that homeopathy would be removed from health insurance benefits. This resulted in some loud criticism. The relevant passage has now disappeared from the draft law.
Karl Lauterbach is not a politician of small words. As Federal Minister of Health, he tackles things that others have left before him – at least that’s what the SPD politician likes to say about himself. At the beginning of the year, he made a big splash with a particularly sensitive topic: homeopathy.
He had well prepared his words for the day when he appeared in front of the press in January: homeopathy made no sense as a health insurance benefit. You also can’t fight climate change with “divining rods,” said Lauterbach. The basis of policy must be scientific evidence. His conclusion: Statutory health insurance companies should no longer pay for homeopathic services in the future.
But of course words must also be followed by actions. In this case, a new legal regulation that removes homeopathy as a health insurance benefit. Lauterbach had planned for this in the so-called Health Care Strengthening Act (GVSG). But this doesn’t seem to be easy for his ministry.
Passage deleted from legal text
An earlier GVSG version from December 2023 states: “The possibility of statutory health insurance companies to offer homeopathic and anthroposophic medicines as well as homeopathic services as additional statutory benefits (…) will be deleted.” But this passage is in the current draft law, which is… ARD capital studio exists, now disappeared again, virtually erased.
Why the retreat? “Not all coalition partners find this regulation easy,” Lauterbach recently pointed somewhat vaguely in the direction of the traffic light partners. He didn’t say who exactly he meant.
However, the FDP has repeatedly positioned itself very clearly. At the request of ARD capital studios According to the Bundestag faction: Anyone who wants to take homeopathic remedies can “continue to do so at their own expense”. However, they support the debate about the deletion: “Globuli and Co. at the expense of the solidarity community are not compatible with a science-based health policy,” said the parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus.
She added: She is confident that “we can also reach agreement with the Greens” that “evidence-based medicine must always be the benchmark for care.” A swipe – at least.
The green one braked Coalition partner?
So was it the Greens who gave in and are now reviving homeopathy as a cash benefit? There are only taciturn answers from the party and parliamentary group: “The Ministry of Health is in charge,” it says. Incidentally, the Greens have positioned themselves with their “fundamental program”.
However, it is precisely this program that is worded evasively: services whose “effectiveness has been scientifically proven” must be “taken over by the solidarity community”. The passage leaves it open whether other therapies can also be paid for.
One thing is clear: the Greens were not big supporters of reform from the start. The savings are minimal, it is a “debate about sideshows,” said the parliamentary group’s health policy spokesman, Janosch Dahmen, in January 2024.
Contradiction from Baden-Württemberg, for example
The green milieu in the southwest in particular has rebelled in recent weeks: Baden-Württemberg’s Green Health Minister Manfred Lucha criticized Lauterbach’s initiative as “hypocritical”. “Many people trust homeopathy because they obviously have good experiences with it,” Lucha told the SWR. The Green state chairwoman Lena Schwelling complained about a “crusade against homeopathy” as early as 2022.
For the Southwest Greens, this is probably also location policy: large manufacturers are based in the Ländle, such as WALA remedies in Bad Boll, Swabia. The Swiss manufacturer Weleda, which employs almost 1,000 people at its Schwäbisch Gmünd site, called for people to protest against Lauterbach’s plans.
Since the announcement that globules would be removed from health insurance benefits, the homeopathy scene has put pressure on politicians: a petition to the Bundestag has collected almost 200,000 supporter signatures since February. Homeopathy is “popular and expressly desired,” it says. The exclusion is “discrimination”.
“As a rule, there is no evidence of effectiveness”
Things are different when it comes to cash registers. It is “understandable from a medical point of view” that the statutory health insurance benefits for homeopathy should be canceled, says AOK board chairwoman Carola Reimann. Because: “As a rule, these healing methods lack evidence-based proof of effectiveness.”
The fact that Lauterbach has now removed the passage in the draft bill has little financial impact on the coffers, says Reimann. Lauterbach had expected savings of between 20 and 50 million euros annually. A relatively small amount – most recently, the total annual expenditure of statutory health insurance companies was more than 300 billion euros.
The expenditure for the health insurance funds in the area of homeopathy is manageable – and the resistance to reforms is great, as is now evident. This is probably why Lauterbach’s predecessor Jens Spahn from the CDU did not tackle the controversial reimbursement of costs for homeopathic medicines. The simple calculation: It doesn’t cost much and doesn’t hurt.
Apparently there are few adjustment screws for relief
In addition to homeopathy, Lauterbach has so far hardly presented any concrete ideas as to how he wants to relieve the burden on the coffers. Instead, the system will likely face additional expenses, for example because additional medical study places are to be paid for using statutory health insurance funds. The health insurance companies are already warning of rising contributions.
The traffic light government had actually agreed in the coalition agreement to support the coffers with more tax resources. That hasn’t happened yet. Lauterbach’s idea paper states flowerily that it should be implemented “as soon as the budgetary conditions allow it in the light of economic development.”
That sounds like the principle of hope. This is exactly what Lauterbach is now focusing on when it comes to homeopathy. Because he is actually a sharp critic of globules and Schüßler salts. He announced that he would remain in his position. Everything else should now be “discussed in the parliamentary process”. However, the bill must first go through the cabinet.
Perhaps he is betting that there is still a majority against homeopathy as a health insurance benefit. However, he is passing the responsibility on to the MPs. Not everyone in the traffic light factions will be happy about this new controversial topic.