Merz on health insurance: A commendable change of heart

Last year, the SPD Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who had just passed away, said in the taz interview that at some point citizen insurance, i.e. the merging of private and statutory health insurance, would come. After all, even the SPD and the Greens needed a long time to become aware of the injustice. Well, one might think, the same has happened with the CDU and Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The coexistence of private and statutory insurance is causing a massive problem in the population's sense of justice, Merz said on Monday in a press conference after the disastrous elections for the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin.

Apart from the fact that Merz likes to say things that he or a spokesman for him then takes back or tones down, this statement is still remarkable. Ultimately, the growing gap in the treatment of those with private and statutory insurance could only be ignored for those people who are predominantly privately insured themselves and therefore never have to wait weeks or even months for a specialist appointment. The CDU/CSU has had the biggest blinders on so far.

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Of course, Merz does not want to abolish private health insurance. The CSU now says reassuringly that the Chancellor meant “only the appointment”.

These appointments are now mainly made via online platforms, which regularly offer timely appointments to those with private insurance and often no appointments at all to those with statutory health insurance. With corresponding consequences for the course of the disease and the sense of justice in society.

If the CDU/CSU is now ready to seriously put a stop to this injustice, that would be a real change of heart. The question of citizens' insurance may need a few more awareness-raising election results.