Can’t get a doctor’s appointment? Today, the biggest petition of all time in the Bundestag is about the causes. It is under-complex and forgets an important topic.
Loudspeaker Listen to article Too much bureaucracy, too little time for sick people – many doctors are frustrated. © Jose A. Bernat/Getty Images; Maskot/Getty Images
Andreas Gassen is an influential man. The eloquent head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) not only represents the interests of tens of thousands of general practitioners, specialists and psychotherapists, he is also constantly in the media. During the pandemic, Gassen regularly criticized government corona measures as excessive, wanted to lift all measures as early as October 2021 and was in an ongoing dispute with Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
It is all the more unusual how Gassen is conveying his current concerns to Lauterbach this Monday: in the form of a hearing before the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag. Lauterbach himself is present, which is also unusual for a minister on this committee. Of course, according to the Basic Law, the right to petition is available to “everyone” – but explicitly to people, not to an interest group like the KBV, whose head is Gassen.