Bundestag passes emergency care reform; health insurance top-up seen steady at 2.9%
New hospital-based emergency centres and linked 112 and 116117 hotlines: the coalition and Greens back the bill, AfD and Left abstain. Parts of the insurers' savings package are also revised.
Archive image · Photo: HerrAdams / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Germany's Bundestag on Thursday passed a reform of emergency medical care, with the conservative bloc, the Social Democrats and the Greens voting in favour and the far-right AfD and the Left Party abstaining. Patients will receive an initial professional assessment by phone or in person. The 112 emergency number and the 116117 on-call doctor service will be linked, and integrated emergency centres attached to hospitals will direct patients to a practice, an out-of-hours clinic or an emergency room depending on urgency.
Health Minister Carsten Linnemann (CDU) said the new system would ensure patients always end up in the right place. The aim is to ease pressure on overstretched emergency rooms and ambulance services. The law also amends a savings package for statutory health insurers: a cost rule burdening family doctors and paediatricians is scrapped, psychotherapy fees are improved, and insurers must again notify members of contribution increases.
An official panel of estimators expects the average supplementary contribution rate to remain at 2.9% in 2027, which Linnemann said meant the rate would stay stable next year. The figure is a benchmark; each insurer sets its own rate. The Bundesrat, the upper house, is due to consider the reform on Nov. 20.