Ein Schritt vorwärts - zwei Schritte zurück? Rot-grüne Gesundheitspolitik 1998 - 2003

The strategy of the 1998 Red-Green government in the field of health care aimed to realize two core objectives: first, the government wanted to improve the quality of health care, and second, it intended to reduce treatment costs and thus maintain the stability of insurance contributions without cuts to a comprehensive benefits catalogue. SPD and Green Party have retained competition among the health insurance funds, budgets and flat-rates in the payment of providers introduced by the preceding government but revoked many of the measures of cost privatisation. However, since its re-election in autumn 2002, the governing coalition has increasingly moved towards privatization of treatment costs. As regards the effects of recent policy changes, experience so far shows that the competition of health insurance funds as well as the sectoral budgets largely failed to increase the efficiency of health care