12.01.2024 – 11:13
BPI Federal Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry
Berlin (ots)
According to media reports, the Federal Minister of Health is planning to cancel the reimbursement of homeopathic medicines as part of statutory health insurance benefits. “It is incomprehensible why, in the current situation, the Federal Minister of Health wants to remove treatment options that have been tried and tested over many years, such as homeopathic and anthroposophic medicines, as statutory benefits. The number of drug delivery bottlenecks is increasing without the Federal Health Minister’s previous short-term measures having any effect,” says Dr. Kai Joachimsen, Managing Director of the Federal Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (BPI). “For the second winter in a row, we are seeing that Karl Lauterbach is unable to find suitable measures to close gaps in care – especially not in the care of children with respiratory diseases and fever or in the provision of antibiotics. Therapy pluralism, i.e. the diversity and availability of different therapy options, is therefore becoming increasingly important more important.”
“The gap in the supply of children’s fever juices in the 2022/2023 cold season already showed that the availability of alternative preparations such as herbal or homeopathic medicines was an important therapeutic alternative, among other things, in the treatment of colds,” says Joachimsen. “The quick, low-threshold access and uncomplicated start of treatment through immediate receipt of proven and available self-medication medicines, including from the area of special therapeutic directions, leads to rapid relief of symptoms as well as less chronicity and aggravation of an originally mild illness. Self-medication is for patients Important in such cases: You are often spared the unnecessary trip to a doctor’s office and the waiting time,” explains Joachimsen.
“In order to relieve the burden on doctors’ practices and other pharmaceutical therapies in critical supply situations, we strongly recommend that this tried-and-tested therapeutic approach not be further curtailed. Otherwise, the minister would cancel a supplementary treatment that generally has few side effects, which sometimes also requires the use of other medicines affected by supply bottlenecks prevented. Both the variety of therapies and the free choice of therapy on the part of patients would be restricted. This is neither in the interest of the patients nor in the interest of sustainable healthcare. On top of that, the associated cost savings in statutory health insurance would be just ten million euros “In relation to this, it is negligible. Consequently, the Federal Minister of Health would be well advised to instead focus on a real structural reform that would ensure broad care and make it sustainable without worsening it,” emphasizes Joachimsen.
Press contact:
Andreas Aumann (press spokesman), Tel. 030 27909-123, [email protected]
Original content from: BPI Federal Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry, transmitted by news aktuell