Karlsruhe rejects urgent motions against health insurance savings law

Content and Goals of the Savings Package

The core of the law is the stabilization of contribution rates in statutory health insurance. The package is intended to relieve the statutory health insurance funds from sharply rising billion-euro expenditures in 2027 and to „erneute Beitragserhöhungen verhindern." It provides, among other things, for limits on remuneration increases for medical practices, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as restrictions for insured persons, such as caps on free co-insurance of spouses and higher co-payments for medications.

The project is the responsibility of Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU). It is part of a series of reform projects with which the black-red coalition aims to demonstrate its capacity to act and set economic impulses by the summer. Only a few days before the planned vote in the Bundestag, the coalition faction had submitted 278 pages of amendment motions.

Criticism from the Ranks of the Greens

Greens health policy expert Janosch Dahmen criticized on Wednesday after consultations in the Bundestag's Health Committee that „die vergangenen Tage ein chaotisches Gesetzgebungsverfahren erlebt" had been experienced. He wanted Karlsruhe to examine whether „in diesem Fall überhaupt noch ein ordnungsgemäßes parlamentarisches Verfahren möglich ist" is possible at all in this case. CDU member of parliament Thomas Heilmann had stopped the legislative procedure for the heating law of the Ampel government with a similar urgent motion in the summer of 2023.

Heating Law Precedent

In the present case, Heilmann had argued that too little time for deliberation had been granted to the members of parliament. The Federal Constitutional Court will decide on the heating law procedure on the merits on July 23 – around three years after the urgent motion at that time.

The health insurance savings law is to be referred to the Bundesrat immediately after the Bundestag decision, before it goes into summer recess. This clears the parliamentary path for the law, provided no mediation procedures are initiated in the Bundesrat.

The case illustrates the growing importance of the Federal Constitutional Court as an arbiter in controversial legislative procedures and ties in with the precedent set by the heating law from 2023.