MUNICH (dpa-AFX) – Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) experienced a strong headwind on Wednesday in Munich from the delegates of the German Pharmacists’ Conference. “Our remuneration is to be reduced by 120 million euros with the lawnmowers in 2023 and 2024,” criticized the President of the Federal Union of German Pharmacists’ Associations, Gabriele Overwiening, with a view to the expected effects of the Financial Stabilization Act on statutory health insurance companies. For a period of two years, this provides for an increase in the deduction that pharmacies have to grant the health insurers for each prescribed drug by 13 percent to two euros.
“Your draft law is a resounding slap in the face,” said Ursula Funke, President of the Hessian Chamber of Pharmacists, to the loud approval of the Lauterbach delegates. “The lemon isn’t just squeezed out in the pharmacies, it’s dust-dry.” The owners are already unable to pay their employees reasonable salaries, making them less attractive as employers.
For his part, Lauterbach asked the pharmacists for their understanding that he had to temporarily increase the deduction to cover the deficit of the statutory health insurance funds. “I would have loved to have spared you that burden, but I had to make sure that the burden was distributed more or less equally across all areas.” At the same time, he promised the pharmacists who had come from all over Germany “new perspectives”, for example through the possibility of additional pharmaceutical services or vaccinations./eri/DP/ngu