Tiroler Tageszeitung, editorial from May 24, 2023. By Anita Heubacher: "Peanuts instead of a billion patients".

2023-05-23 22:05:37

Innsbruck (OTS) – The merger of the regional health insurance companies should have flushed a lot of money into the system. For the benefit of the insured. They have to pay an ever-increasing proportion of the bills for the doctor of choice themselves or wait forever for the panel doctor.

What remained of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz? In addition to a lot of trouble that he left behind for his party, there was also the merger of the health insurance companies. Contrary to its nature, the Turkish ÖVP had discovered a love of centralism and made the Austrian Health Insurance Fund, ÖGK, out of nine regional health insurance funds. Around 80 percent of people in Austria were insured there before the merger, and there are just as many today. The merger and thus the harmonization of the tariffs, the migration of funds to Vienna for central administration, the streamlining of structures should have brought the famous billion patients. More money for the insured and the panel doctors.
The merger has apparently not brought any money to date, but rather a minus in the balance sheets. However, that has been achieved through the merger: the balance of power between employer and employee representatives in the health insurance committees has shifted. In party speech: the red functionaries were pushed back, the blacks were now strengthened again.
The insured should generally be the same. Without being asked, he pays his social security contributions for whom and wants to receive a benefit in return. This is becoming increasingly difficult, because the queue in front of the panel doctor is long and there are hardly any appointments, if at all. Anyone who can afford it goes to a doctor of their choice and has to find out more and more often that they are getting less and less reimbursement from the ÖGK. The balance is peanuts instead of a billion patients.
The health insurance fund and thus the 82 percent of those insured lack money. This is because politicians have bundled all weak contributors into the ÖGK. The 82 percent of those insured also pay for the hospital stay and the visit of the statutory health insurance doctor for those who can contribute little or nothing at all. Minimum security recipients, asylum seekers, the unemployed … The accusation is not aimed at these groups, but at politicians. She has limited solidarity to 82 percent of the population and has ensured that certain professions pay into smaller coffers and that the weakest do not have to help. Because the small coffers are fed better, they are able to pay their doctors better fees and their policyholders more reimbursements. Instead of merging the health insurance companies, it would have been better to create a regional health insurance fund for each federal state and extend solidarity to 100 percent of the population.