Is Karl Lauterbach going too far?

Leading representatives of statutory health insurance are taking to the barricades over a bill by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) to combat cardiovascular diseases. “More medication and checks for children is actionism, but not a strategy to get the civilization disease under control,” the head of the highest decision-making body for health insurance, Josef Hecken, told the editorial network Germany (RND). ) in view of Lauterbach’s ‘Healthy Heart Law’.

“Instead of ensuring that children eat a healthy and balanced diet and that there are information campaigns about a healthy lifestyle, drugs are being prescribed,” Hecken complained. The statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) that Lauterbach prefers are not ‘supermarket mints’, but rather drugs with many interactions and side effects, Hecken warned. For example, they caused muscle pain, liver damage or diabetes. “Pills instead of a healthy diet and more exercise – what attitude to life are we giving our children here?”, the head of the Federal Joint Committee of Doctors, Clinics and Health Insurance Funds (G-BA) said indignantly.

With the law, Lauterbach plans to significantly relax the conditions for prescribing statins and thus give around two million more people access to these drugs than before. This mainly affects children and young people. Lauterbach follows the recommendations of cardiologists. However, other medical associations and statutory health insurers are strongly opposed to it.

Controversial drugs for children

Hecken said that with such an approach, lifelong medication would begin in the teenage years. “The approach of consistently administering medication to children should remain the absolute exception when nothing else is possible for medical reasons,” he warned, stressing: “Early administration of medication should be limited to absolutely necessary individual cases, such as children with a genetic predisposition where a change in lifestyle alone is not enough.”

Hecken, like medical associations and health insurers, is particularly bothered by the fact that Lauterbach wants to lay down the rules for treatments and the prescription of medicines in law. Normally, the G-BA decides on this, taking into account the extensive expertise. Lauterbach apparently relies exclusively on the perspective of cardiologists, Hecken criticized. “My understanding of decisions on a scientific basis is different – ​​you can’t just listen to arguments that confirm your own opinion,” Hecken said, referring to Lauterbach. A broad prevention strategy is necessary to prevent cardiovascular diseases, according to the G-BA boss.

The official statement of the G-BA on Lauterbach’s bill, which is available to the RND, also points out that Lauterbach strictly rejected such an approach during the period of the grand coalition. The then Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) wanted to legally include certain services in the service catalogue of the health insurer. Lauterbach explained at the time as a health expert in his parliamentary group that the SPD rejected the idea that a minister could decide on the benefits of the health insurance himself. Spahn eventually gave up his plan.