The coalition’s health savings package is expected to be approved Friday. Greens are irritated by short-term changes to the bill, “278 pages long”. They are considering legal action to stop its adoption.
Green Party members are considering using legal means to stop a planned vote on health insurance reform this week, according to party leader Felix Banaszak. Banaszak criticized short-term changes to the bill in the Bavarian media group’s newspapers, which he called “cuts.”
“In a short period of time, we received 278 pages of changes,” he criticized. “This is not only careless and unprofessional, it is a gross disregard for our parliamentary work.”
An urgent proposal like the one with which a CDU MP stopped the legislative process for the so-called traffic light coalition heating law in Karlsruhe in 2023 is quite possible. Then he argued that deputies did not have enough time to discuss the bill. The Federal Constitutional Court followed this argument and prevented the Bundestag from passing the law before the summer holidays.
Voting will have to be postponed
First of all, the Greens want to ensure that the adoption of the law is removed from the agenda of the Bundestag on Friday. To this end, a discussion of the regulations is planned in the Bundestag today at the beginning of the plenary session.
This was stated by the leader of the parliamentary group of the Greens, Katharina Dröge, in the joint morning magazine. ORD and ZDF, on Monday parliamentary groups received about 300 pages of changes; on Tuesday the coalition said they were still incorrect.
There is no “final version” yet. This means that continuous work is impossible. The law could also be adopted in the first session after the summer parliamentary recess in September, Dröge continued.
The reform is designed to ease the burden on insurance companies.
The Union and the SPD want to pass the austerity package in the Bundestag on Friday. It must then go directly to the Federal Council. The law does not require approval, but states can slow down the process by contacting a mediation committee. Resistance to the schedule is also observed from the federal states.
The package from Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) aims to relieve statutory health insurance companies from soaring costs in order to prevent further increases in premiums. To this end, remuneration increases in practices, clinics and the pharmaceutical industry should be limited. Patients face restrictions on free co-insurance for spouses and increased copays for medications, among other things.