Federal Health Minister Prof. Karl Lauterbach:
Madam President! My dear colleagues! First of all, I would like to endorse the words of Federal Defense Minister Pistorius. We, too, strongly condemn Putin’s war of aggression against the people of Ukraine, which violates human rights. Every day children, civilians, old people, disabled people, innocent people are hurt. That is unacceptable.
Germany provides very intensive support. We are active, for example, by supplying Ukraine with prostheses. There are a lot of injured people there who lose arms and legs. We treat the seriously injured in our special clinics. We are also involved in the training of surgeons and special forces, and we provide telemedicine support. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all the doctors and nurses involved who do this work, but also the orthopedists and specialists for this achievement.
This civilian achievement is also a great achievement. I am in close contact with the Ukrainian Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko. We have promised that we will also work intensively on setting up civil structures and hospital structures. I told him that at the World Health Assembly and we will honor that.
Not only in the area of defence, but also in other areas, we are in a situation where a lot has been left undone. The term turning point has been used here frequently. It’s appropriate here too. I bring a few examples.
For years we have had too few nurses. We cannot recruit many foreign nursing staff for German nursing, although they are actually well trained. The recognition procedures are not appropriate. We test theoretical content and not practical skills. Today we passed a law in the cabinet that provides for us to put this knowledge, which is already there, to a practical test so that many more of these people can work here.
We need more qualified nurses. Internationally, 10 percent is aimed for. We only achieve 1 percent. We will simplify this procedure and also support the students here, and we will digitize the care. These are laws that have long been in place. we will do that
We will pass the care support and relief law this week. We negotiated very intensively there and found a good compromise. This will once again strengthen the caregivers at home, the relatives. A relief budget has been decided so that these people are not overwhelmed with the care they provide. We will relieve those who are in inpatient care by increasing the subsidy. That too is a measure that was left undone and which we will now adopt in the second and third readings on Friday.
There have also been known supply bottlenecks and deficits in the area of pharmaceutical supply for years. More than 450 medicines are not available. We are a very rich country. Some of the medicines for our children are not available. The children suffered a lot during the pandemic and went through a lot. We don’t have any medication now. This is an unacceptable situation for our rich country. That’s why we’re introducing the Act to Combat Drug Supply Bottlenecks for the first reading today. This is an important law that should ensure that we make these medicines available by not storing them, by not using fixed prices, by not using discount agreements.
It is unacceptable that the medicines are still available in our neighboring countries and not in Germany. We’ll turn that off. This law would have been necessary for a long time. We are also active here. Today will be the first reading.
We also have major deficits in the area of hospital care. We have a situation where many nurses and doctors actually leave the hospital and no longer want to work there. The work there is like an assembly line. Everything is paid for on a case-by-case basis in a way that no other European country does. Here we have to come to a de-economy. Medicine must be more in the foreground again. We must come to a debureaucratization. 30 percent of the working time of young doctors is wasted on bureaucracy.
We need better quality. This is achieved by centralizing the difficult interventions. The German Cancer Society estimates that by centralizing interventions – what we are now pursuing with our hospital legislation – 10,000 cancer deaths a year can be avoided. This is a very important law. We worked on this yesterday with the federal states. They were very important, very good negotiations. I hope that before the summer break we can come up with the cornerstones of this law, which has been overdue for ten years, and that we can decide on the draft bill during the summer break. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the coalition partners. The Bund showed a good formation yesterday. We got along very well and are on the right track with the countries. The next meeting of the federal-state working group will take place on June 1st. As I said: We expect key points before the summer break.
In conclusion, let me point out once again – as the Federal Minister of Defense said – that a lot has been left undone. – He’s so right! This applies in particular to digitization in the healthcare system. We’re defeated. We’re not in the top 10. We’re not in the top 15. We’re lucky if we’re in the top 20. A lot has been left here.
We are therefore working on important legislative initiatives. We will introduce a digital law that will make the electronic health record available as an opt-out solution by the end of 2024.
We estimate that by 2025, 80 percent of policyholders will have this opt-out solution. We will combine the digital data in such a way that they are also available for research, such as cancer research.
As you can see, we have big plans. We will master this together. Thank you for the trust and for the cooperation.