Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, says statutory health insurance funds should continue funding homeopathy “to the small extent they do currently”.
Spahn told a Berlin discussion panel last week the he saw little point in forcing Germany’s health funds to drop homeopathy, pointing out that costs of state funded reimbursements for homeopathic remedies amounted to €20 million, compared to €40 billion for medicines as a whole.
The current debate in Germany about whether the state should halt funding of homeopathic treatments, has been prompted in part by a call from France’s top health agency to phase out funding.
Some of the strongest opposition to state funding for homeopathy in Germany has come from the country’s Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians [Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung], whose chairman has demanded a ban for “for useless pseudo pills.”
Gassen told the Neue Osnabrücker newspaper recently that parliament should no longer allow Germany’s system to be “misused”” by homeopathy, claiming that this worsened the situation for parents of children with cancer who “had to struggle” to get refunds for their medications.
But Kordula Schulz-Asche, a health specialist from the Gemany’s opposition Green Party, has welcomed what she called Spahn’s “unexcited stance” amidst the current highly-charged debate.
Michaela Geiger, chair of the German Central Association of Homeopathic Physicians has commented that the type of ban called for by Gassen would lead to medicinal “monoculture”.