(Gemini Audio)
(de-news.net) – Higher co-payments for prescription medications have been proposed by Germany’s health minister, Susanne Warken (CDU), as a possible instrument to alleviate mounting financial strain on the country’s mandatory health insurance system. In outlining her position, Warken has reportedly indicated that an adjustment appears both reasonable and overdue, emphasizing that co-payment levels have remained unchanged for more than two decades despite substantial shifts in pharmaceutical costs and system-wide expenditure patterns. Although the governing coalition is said not to be engaged in detailed or comprehensive discussions on specific policy measures, she has nonetheless framed the reconsideration of co-payments as part of a broader debate on structural sustainability. Since 2004, patients have been required to contribute between five and ten euros per prescription—unless they surpass an established annual burden threshold—while children and teenagers remain exempt from any such charges. This framework, Warken suggested, reflects a policy equilibrium that may no longer fully correspond to contemporary fiscal realities.
Amid these deliberations, a commission established by Warken is expected to deliver concrete reform proposals for the health insurance system in the spring. Its mandate takes on increased significance at a moment when a number of statutory insurers have already raised their supplemental contributions, citing rising expenditures and demographic pressures that have strained their financial reserves. The upcoming recommendations are therefore anticipated to shape the next phase of debate on how costs should be distributed across insurers, patients, and the pharmaceutical sector.
Nevertheless, statutory health insurers have articulated broader and more systemic concerns regarding the evolution of pharmaceutical pricing in Germany. Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis, deputy head of the GKV-Spitzenverband, reportedly warned that prices for new and innovative medicines have become increasingly detached from any coherent or realistic cost benchmarks. She underscored her assessment by pointing to a 176-percent increase in the cost of treatments involving novel active substances between 2012 and 2024—an escalation that she described as indicative of structural misalignment in the pricing regime. Looking ahead to the upcoming fiscal year, she projected that pharmaceutical expenditures would rise by more than three billion euros, further intensifying pressures on insurers’ contribution rates. In her view, the policy objective must now be to reestablish a stable and evidence-based balance between therapeutic benefit and financial burden.
Stoff-Ahnis further argued that the existing framework for price negotiations has grown inconsistent and fragmented, with the result that insurers are compelled to pay disproportionately high rates far too frequently. These distortions, she maintained, ultimately translate into higher supplemental contributions for the insured public, revealing the extent to which unresolved pricing challenges reverberate throughout the broader health-financing system.
