The governing coalitions of the CDU/CSU and SPD rejected the chief doctors’ proposal to eliminate all voluntary benefits offered by statutory health insurers.
Simone Borchardt, the health‑policy spokesperson for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, told “Stern” that the suggestion to abolish the insurer’s voluntary contractual benefits was “too narrow and distracts from the real need for reform”.
The social democrats were skeptical as well. “It is misleading to imply that removing a few extra services can fundamentally stabilize statutory health insurance” said Christos Pantazis, SPD health‑policy spokesperson. He stressed that contribution funds are solidarity funds and that every expenditure must be measured against medical and evidence‑based benefit. “That does not solve the underlying financing problem”.
The head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), Andreas Gassen, had called for a total abolition of the insurers’ voluntary benefits, which include professional dental cleanings and controversial treatments such as homeopathy.
“Symbolic debates about voluntary benefits do not help” said CDU health expert Simone Borchardt. She emphasizes real structural reforms, such as improving care efficiency and eliminating duplicate structures. She notes that cutting voluntary benefits would not resolve the statutory insurers’ structural financial issues.
Similarly, SPD MP Pantazis argued that services without scientifically proven benefit were worth scrutinizing. Yet he added, “Even if voluntary contractual benefits could save about one billion euros, that would represent only a small fraction of the statutory insurance’s total annual spending of more than 300 billion euros”.