Appointments: Health insurance companies complain about discrimination against those with statutory health insurance

The umbrella association of statutory health insurance companies criticizes the preference given to those with private insurance over those with statutory health insurance when arranging doctor’s appointments. “If you want real equal treatment, you should ensure that when making an appointment you can no longer ask whether someone is legally or privately insured,” said the deputy head of the GKV, Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis, to the editorial network Germany (RND). “If you go to a booking portal and look for a specialist appointment as someone with statutory health insurance, you will be offered one in 6 weeks or even later. If you click on “private patient”, on the other hand, it works the next day.”

Stoff-Ahnis said 90 percent of people in Germany are legally insured. “It is more than justifiable that in the future, when making appointments, it is 100 percent about medical necessity and not about whether someone is insured by statutory health insurance or private health insurance.” When allocating appointments, she also called for a legal obligation for all medical practices to make free appointments available on a daily basis to an online portal that the statutory health insurance companies and the statutory health insurance associations can access.