National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) President Andreas Gassen calls for corona citizen testing to be stopped completely. “These meaningless tests must be abolished. They are very expensive, the bureaucratic effort is enormous and the epidemiological significance is zero,” Gassen told Bild newspaper. It was a “completely useless event to test healthy people with questionable quality without cause”, emphasized the KBV head. However, PCR tests on patients with symptoms are important to clearly demonstrate corona infections.
KBV and statutory health insurance doctors associations in the federal states stated in a letter to Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach on Thursday that they “will no longer be able to bill and pay for tests on citizens in the future”. Among other things, they justified this by saying that they could check eligibility requirements even less than before.
Since Thursday, free trials are only available for risk groups and other exceptional cases. For tests, for example, before a concert or meeting with people over 60, an additional payment of three euros is due. Anyone who wants this test must sign that it is made for this purpose.
Statutory health insurance doctors: examination is not possible
The panel doctors write that it has been demonstrated in the past that the audit of accounts provided by the ministry and carried out by the panel doctors associations could not prevent cases of fraud. Under the new regulations, detailed eligibility requirements would now also have to be proven. This examination is certainly not possible for statutory health insurance doctors associations.
You cannot “reliable that all test centers will perform the services correctly”. It cannot be assumed that only people who meet the eligibility requirements under the new regulation will actually be tested. Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that test centers will provide everyone with sufficient information about the new eligibility requirements and verify all necessary evidence and self-declarations. “As a result, the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians cannot be held responsible for making clear payments on bills whose accuracy they cannot begin to verify,” the associations write to Lauterbach.
A spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of Health explained to the request that it is assumed that associations of statutory health insurance doctors, as public entities, will continue to fulfill their mandate of billing and random testing of testing centers. “In dialogue, we will discuss with the KVs in the short term how the new rules can be implemented in a non-bureaucratic way,” a spokesperson said.
Lauterbach: “Money well invested”
Lauterbach again defended the new regulation. Tests would now be more meaningful. “If everyone can get tested as often as they want without there being a reason to do so, many tests will be negative or, if they are positive, often false positives,” Lauterbach said on the “RTL Direct” program. He added, “We’ve narrowed this down so that the tests are more meaningful.” Citizens would now have to contribute to the costs. But Lauterbach appealed to people: “If I can protect a lot of people from infection in a larger group for three euros, then it’s money well spent.”
According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the incidence of infection in Germany has had a dynamic upward trend over the past week. In their weekly report published on Thursday, the experts wrote that there was a 38% increase in the national seven-day incidence last week compared to the week before. As of Friday morning, the RKI reported more than 113,000 new infections and a seven-day incidence of 682.7. In addition, a high number of unreported cases that are not reported to the authorities can be assumed. According to Divi’s critical care registry, the number of patients in intensive care units was 934 on Thursday – compared to a good 600 patients at the start of the month.
Furthermore, according to the weekly report, the omicron subvariant BA.5, which has been dominant in Germany for some time, has recently increased again. According to the latest findings – a sample from the week before last – their share was nearly 66%. In the previous week, BA.5’s share was around 52%. As RKI experts write, the BA.4 variant has continued to increase recently, but less strongly than in previous weeks – according to the latest findings, it was around 7%. In Germany, the genome is only fully examined in a small proportion of positive samples.