/image alliance, Michael Kappeler
Berlin The Federal Cabinet is scheduled to approve the much-criticized Healthy Heart Act on August 21. The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) put the proposal on the agenda of the first cabinet meeting after the summer recess. This emerges from a preview of the dates of the cabinet meetings German medical journal is present.
The controversial pharmacy law will also be on the agenda on August 21. The original plan was for this law to be approved by the cabinet in mid-July. However, this did not happen; apparently the so-called legality test of the Federal Ministry of Justice was missing (BMJ). Minister Buschmann is currently on vacation, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) explained after the cabinet meeting.
The law on emergency reform, the law on living organ donation, the law on the creation of a digital health agency and the law on strengthening public health to create the Federal Institute for Prevention and Education in Medicine (BIPAM) were passed there in mid-July. All four are now in the parliamentary process and will be discussed there after the summer break, starting in mid-September, and will come into force at the turn of the year.
According to Minister Lauterbach’s wishes, the Healthy Heart Act should also come into force from 2025, but the entire professional and association world is against the law. This is how the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians sees things (KBV) a violation of the system by law and requires the complete cancellation of the projects.
This includes, for example, the prescription of statins for risk groups or children. According to the draft law, the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA), which is responsible for selecting therapies, medications or examination methods, is left out. According to the KBV, the only positive point is that the topic of prevention and regular check-ups is being addressed.
Also the president of the Federal Medical Association (BK), Klaus Reinhardt, had stressed that prevention and therapy must be based on scientific evidence and not on the demands of politics and authorities. He fears that the planned intervention in self-administration will not lead to better care, but instead endanger the quality and acceptance of preventive examinations and that this will lead to regulatory chaos.
Rarely have the medical profession, science, health insurance companies and self-administration agreed so much in the assessment of a law as they did with the Healthy Heart Act, according to the German Association of General Practitioners (High voltage). Federal Presidents Nicola Buhlinger-Gpfarth and Markus Beier emphasized that the law should be stopped in this form.
As a result of the law, health insurance companies fear that long-established prevention courses will be lost. Their money will be used to fund new cardiovascular disease prevention plans. Health insurance associations say that 1.5 million people will have taken part in prevention courses by 2023 and the corresponding funds will have been exhausted.
If this budget is used to fund cholesterol-lowering drugs, as well as expanding health screening services and physician fees, there will be little or no funds available to address lifestyle-related causes, according to health insurance associations. This means that prevention recommendations issued by doctors would also be ineffective.
The impartial chairman of the Federal Joint Committee, Josef Hecken, also criticized the law several times. Instead of working to ensure that children have a healthy and balanced diet and educational campaigns about a healthy lifestyle, he complained that they should be prescribed medication.
The official statement of the impartial members of the G-BA on the Healthy Heart Act states that it is technically questionable whether the measures laid down in the submitted draft law can actually achieve the intended goal, because they not only completely exclude the extremely important primary preventive care, but even counter-finance additional costs for diagnostics and secondary preventive medication with already scarce funds to promote primary prevention. © bee/aerzteblatt.de