The Green Party is strongly criticizing the Coalition Committee’s decision mandating sick notes starting from the first day of illness. Addressing the “Spiegel,” Janosch Dahmen, the health policy spokesman for the Greens’ parliamentary group, stated that while the coalition is already suffocating the healthcare system with its policy of cutting costs, it is simultaneously overloading doctor’s practices with millions of extra patients just for administrative paperwork.
Dahmen argued that individuals with minor illnesses, such as colds or digestive infections, should recover at home rather than going to an overcrowded waiting room to secure short-term sick leave. He stressed that this requirement not only ties up valuable medical capacities but also worsens infection control, running counter to the principles of modern primary care.
Looking at healthcare and care reforms-areas that were absent from the Coalition Committee’s resolution-Dahmen further criticized the decision, saying that the committee apparently chose to focus on creating new mandates rather than solving significant problems in health policy. Instead of tackling the conflicts related to health insurance funding and the care reform, the high-level summit merely agreed upon “a new health policy program characterized by bureaucracy and added burden.”
