Doctors Strike Over Savings Reforms
January 22, 2003
More than 6,000 German doctors held a one-day strike Wednesday to protest a pending health-care reform that they say will hurt patients.
The strikers focused their protest on the northwestern area of Westphalen-Luppe, where an estimated 5,000 offices were closed. Other doctors protested in such places as Stuttgart, Bremen and the state of Brandenburg; near the capital of Berlin.
The president of German Medical Association, Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe, defended the action. "We are protesting and demonstrating together with other health workers because we want to make it clear that the health care savings package will shift a massive burden onto the patients," Hoppe said.
Health insurers facing huge deficits
The health care reform being drawn up by Health Minister Ulla Schmidt has not been released yet. But it will be designed to stop the huge deficits being run up by the country´s health insurers and prevent further increases in premiums that about 40 percent of people in Germany´s public health insurance system will pay this year.
The doctors are also angry about the government´s decision to freeze their salaries this year as part of its efforts to control costs. The freeze was the final straw Peter Orthen-Rahner, head of a federation of 60,000 German doctors, told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday.
Further protests are planned for next Wednesday, when 20 percent of Berlin’s 6,500 doctors in Berlin will strike for the day. However, doctors have assured patients in the German capital that a system will be put in place ensuring that patients will be able to find a doctor within a radius of two kilometers. (1.2 miles)
Minister threatens to fine doctors
The German Health Ministry declared Wednesday´s action as illegal. A spokesman, Klaus Theo Schröder, urged patients to report striking doctors to their health insurer, and the health minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Birgit Fischer, threatened to fine doctors who went on strike because they had broken their contracts.
Schmidt plans to release her plans to overhaul Germany’s ailing health care system after elections are held in two German states on Feb. 2. The system is drowning under spiraling costs and in December Schmidt was forced to concede that the deficit of the public health insurers would hit €2.5 billion ($2.68 billion) for 2002.
Schmidt wants to introduce more competition into the health care system, specifically breaking the monopoly held by the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians on contract negotiations with the insurers. Critics claim the system encourages doctors to prescribe costly and unnecessary treatments because payment is dependent on the treatment.