According to Oliver Blatt, the chairman of the GKV-Spitzenverband, publicly insured patients should receive better consideration when it comes to securing doctor appointments. Blatt told Funke-Mediengruppe that the healthcare system must be organized so that appointments are assigned based on medical need rather than solely on an individual’s insurance status. He pointed out that 75 million people are covered by public insurance and fund the vast majority of medical fees, yet they frequently face disadvantages when making appointments-a situation he described as an “outrageous injustice.”
However, Blatt explicitly rejects the term “two-class medicine.” He argued that in hospitals and with the majority of physicians, publicly insured patients are treated just as well as private patients; in some cases, the billing process is even simpler for them. The inequality, he insists, is primarily evident in the waiting times for doctor visits.
Blatt clarified that doctors should continue to treat private patients, but they should not automatically give them preferential treatment. He stressed that a publicly insured individual should not have to wait two weeks longer simply because of their insurance type. He noted that a unified remuneration system for doctors would only potentially follow if both insurance systems were combined, calling this a highly complex and political matter. Nevertheless, he believes such a reform should not result in legally insured patients having to pay more.
For now, Blatt advocates focusing on eliminating the concrete disadvantages that exist in outpatient care. He views a national health insurance system (Bürgerversicherung) as unrealistic in the current political climate, stating that the debate would become “extremely contentious.” He feels that discussions regarding the merger of the two systems can be properly addressed later when the immediate discrimination in the current system has been resolved.
