Health-care funds with tax financing – health-care reform proposal

This summer, the main elements of German health-care reform have been revealed. For Markus Lüngen, Andreas Gerber, University of Cologne, and Karl W. Lauterbach, the core of the reform proposals, the health-care funds, are not a model of success. The possible positive results of the funds are achievable, in their opinion, without the funds and with “less bureaucracy, maintenance of the solidarity principle and better competitive conditions”. Also Klaus Jacobs, of the AOK Research Institute, Bonn, gives a critical appraisal of the reform model. He sees considerable deficits especially in the transformation of the financial struc-tures: “The financing should be stable, sustainable, just and competition-friendly and also relieve the burdens on the factor labour.” This is not achieved by the proposed approach. Instead “not only will none of the financing problems be solved but new problems will be created”. According Jochen Pimpertz, Institute of the German economy, Cologne, health-care policy-makers have forgotten the decisive element: “Competition only leads to more efficiency if the insured are offered more options and also if they must bear the financial responsibility for their decisions. Unfortunately, politicians in Berlin have always avoided this problem.”