Berlin (Reuters) – Since the outbreak of the corona pandemic in spring 2020, the federal government has spent over 14 billion euros on test centers and test stations, according to the Greens.
This was communicated by the Ministry of Finance in response to a request, Greens budget politician Paula Piechotta told the Reuters news agency on Thursday. Of this, eight billion euros flowed in this year alone. Over a billion tests have been billed. The Greens rapporteur for the health budget assumes that fraud was involved. “In view of the inadequate controls and the many known cases of fraud, we unfortunately have to assume that a large number of tests that were billed never took place,” said Piechotta. “The damage to taxpayers is immense.”
Until the end of June there were free so-called citizen tests, in which the federal government took over the costs for rapid antigen tests. Since June 30, these tests have only been free for certain groups – for example when visiting hospitals or inpatient care facilities. “In view of this immense expenditure, the massive cases of fraud and the lack of control, the federal government had to pull the ripcord here,” said Piechotta. “Especially since the federal states were not willing to participate in the financing and the associations of statutory health insurance physicians were unable to establish any targeted control mechanisms for months.”
In the health sector, there are other things to finance that are a priority when funds are tight. “In view of major tasks such as digitization, shortage of skilled workers, prevention and improvement of working conditions in the health sector, we cannot afford to waste taxpayers’ money,” said the Green politician. The federal government’s expenditure for tests of over 14 billion euros is a similar amount to the regular annual tax subsidy for the health fund.
(Report by Holger Hansen; Edited by Hans Busemann; If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at [email protected] (for politics and the economy) or [email protected] (for companies and markets).)