Nicola Buhlinger-Göpfarth, the chairwoman of the General Practitioners’ Association, has sharply criticized Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU), stating that the minister shows “absolutely no interest in general practitioner services.” Speaking to the newspaper “Spiegel”, Buhlinger-Göpfarth argued that while the government constantly debates “what more can be done for hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, or health insurers,” the patient practices remain the “blind spot of health policy.”
According to Buhlinger-Göpfarth, GPs were led to believe that budgetary cuts were inevitable, despite the fact that “the pharmaceutical industry and hospitals were rolled out the red carpet until the very end.” She stressed that practitioners are not the “cost driver” of the healthcare system.
The latest savings package for statutory health insurance is designed to restrict payments in private practices, with specific services either ceasing to be reimbursed or being limited to a certain cap.
“Our practices only ever come into focus when it involves taking on additional tasks,” Buhlinger-Göpfarth remarked. She noted that this theme has been a persistent thread throughout the current legislative period, touching on everything from emergency care provisions and the elimination of phone-in sick notes to the establishment of a primary care system. She concluded by asserting that if the minister believes she can simply ignore general practitioners and only contact them when there is “free work to distribute,” she is fundamentally mistaken.
