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German parliament approves unpopular health reform

12 November 2010 21:37 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. German parliament approved the unpopular health reform presented by the German government on Friday, which means Germans have to pay more premium from next year, APA reports quoting Xinhua News Agency.

The reform raised the fee for statutory health insurance from current 14.9 percent of a employee’s gross income to 15.5 percent from January 1st next year. It also changed the shares paid by employers and employees, which employers pay 7.3 percent and employers have to pay 8.2 percent and any future fee rise.

The purpose of this reform was to maintain the creaky system running, which would suffered a deficit of 11 billion euros (about 15 billion U.S. dollars) in 2011.

However, the reform has faced deep conflicts since was it was first drafted in the coalition government. German Chancellor Angla Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) used several months to compromise with their junior partner, Free Democrats (FDP) on some details.

Since it was passed by government in September, the reform has been criticized as "rather brazen" by opposition parties, trade unions and insurers, because it does not make real structural changes but increases burden to poor people.

During today’s parliament vote, the three opposition parties in German parliament, the Social Democrats (SPD), Green Party, and Left Party all choose to vote against the reform.

"The law will improve German healthcare system and make it fairer, more sustainable on financing," Health Minister Philipp Roesler told the parliament. "I hoped to make more progress, but small gains are better than going back," he added.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a leader of the opposition SPD, said Roesler was destroying "one of the best healthcare systems in the world."

"The reform is not balanced between the rich and poor. It forced the people with less pay to burden the deficits of the system," said Adolf Bauer, President of the Organization for the Socially Disadvantaged (SoVD)

At present, statutory health insurance has covered 72 million people or 90 percent of the population in Germany, while 8.5 million wealthier people are within private programs, according to Health Ministry data. 4.3 million people are working in German health system and contributed about 11 percent of the whole economy.