The Association of German Municipalities and Towns (DStGB) has issued a warning regarding the reform of the Statutory Health Insurance (GKV) recently approved by the Bundestag, predicting that it will impose significant additional costs and financial burdens on local authorities.
André Berghegger, the Chief Executive of the DStGB, told the Funke Media Group newspapers that, in the association’s assessment, the newly passed law will lead to considerable financial strain on municipalities. From the DStGB’s perspective, the so-called “most advantageous clause” must be retained to compensate for real cost increases within hospitals.
Berghegger further emphasized the necessity of ensuring that agreed-upon tariff increases are adequately refinanced. He argued that the federal government must meet its obligations by completely covering the GKV costs for recipients of SGB-II benefits, thereby relieving the Statutory Health Insurance of non-insurance related expenditures.
Concurrently, the association called for the abolition of granular staffing requirements for hospitals. This includes removing existing minimum requirements for nursing staff and the current nursing personnel quotient, as well as disregarding the introduction of a new instrument for calculating nursing needs, which has been developed by organizations such as the German Hospital Association, the German Nurses Council, and Verdi.
According to Berghegger, if the focus of budget cuts continues to remain primarily on the hospital sector, the DStGB fears a marked deterioration in healthcare services. Instead of a managed structural transformation, the region risks experiencing an accelerating “cold” structural change. Furthermore, the reform is expected to worsen the already precarious financial situation of municipalities.
