Overview
- To steer patients through GPs before specialist visits, the health minister is considering either a fee for direct specialist access or a year-end bonus for those who use referrals.
- She rejected a blanket per-visit charge and a special tariff for bypassing GPs, arguing she does not want to deter people from seeing a doctor or create inequities.
- A new commission will deliver initial, quickly implementable proposals by March 2026 to stabilize contribution rates to statutory health insurance.
- Raising prescription co-payments, unchanged since 2004, is under review with employers suggesting increases to up to €15, while the GKV federation urges prioritizing structural savings first.
- Parallel steps include expanding pharmacy authority to administer all inactivated vaccinations, improving the electronic patient record’s usability, and evaluating technical flaws in the cannabis law.